ISSUED: 14 April 2023
MEDIA CONTACT: Dana Costa
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — The just-released “Anthology of Appalachian Writers: Barbara Kingsolver Volume XV” centers on the work of Barbara Kingsolver, Shepherd University’s 2022 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. Kingsolver was at Shepherd for the Appalachian Heritage Festival in September 2022 and has continued to work with the editors on the completion of the book.
“The 2023 volume contains a host of world-class authors, including West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman and Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour,” said Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, director, Shepherd’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities. “Award-winning writers such as Karen Spears Zacharias, Marie Manilla, Mark DeFoe, and playwright/fiction writer D. W. Gregory, as well as Kingsolver herself, appear in the collection.”
Pictured (l. to r) are Dr. Mary J.C. Hendrix, president; Noche Gauthier, Appalachian studies major; and Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, director, Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities
Winners of the 2022 West Virginia Fiction Competition are also included—first place Lisa Taka Younis (“Lambs”), second place Patricia Donohoe (“Close Up and Far Away”), and third place Noche Gauthier (“Hymnals”)—and kindergarten-12th grade winner, Musselman High School student Nadia Madenspacher (“The Cliff”).
The Barbara Kingsolver volume of the “Anthology of Appalachian Writers” contains fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and essays by Appalachian writers from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A series of photographs also accompanies the literature.
A reading of the anthology is planned for Saturday, July 8, at 5 p.m. at Four Seasons Books, 116 West German St., Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The anthology will be featured at a September 26 celebration during the Appalachian Heritage Festival at Shepherd and an exhibit featuring art from the volume will take place in the Scarborough Library in August and September.
For information about the Appalachian Heritage Writer’s Project or the anthology, contact Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities.
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