Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (2003), ed. by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson

Ballard and Hudson's Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia is a wonderful, nearly 700-page feast of a book, containing writings of 105 women with strong Appalachian connections, and is an important stand against the cultural hegemony of the American north-east. They define 'Appalachian' as the south-east mountains and their foothills, and include parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

Ballard and Hudson searched The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995), and found only eight of these 105 women listed in it. It would have been interesting to know how many male Appalachian authors are listed in that book, as I strongly suspect that it would be far greater than eight.

But why is Appalachia neglected so much? The editors quote from Lee Smith's 'White Columns and Marble Generals' (2002):

'Appalachia is to the South what the South is to the rest of the country.* That is: lesser than, backward, marginal. Other. Look at the stereotypes: "Hee Haw", "Deliverance", "Dogpatch", and "The Dukes of Hazzard". A bunch of hillbillies sitting on a rickety old porch drinking moonshine and living on welfare, right? Wrong.'

When I think of Appalachian writing I'm reminded of the study I made into the working-class literature of the UK in the interwar years, of how it has just been airbrushed from literary history. This is the full list of the Appalachian writers Ballard Hudson include in their anthology, many of whom are contemporary, but many others who have been part of the airbrushing process:

[Under construction.]

SHEILA KEY ADAMS (1953- )
Short stories:
Come Go Home with Me (1995)


DOROTHY ALLISON (1949- )
Novels:
Cavedweller (1998)
Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)



LISA ALTHER (1944- )
Novels:
Five Minutes in Heaven (1995)
Bedrock (1990)
Other Women (1984)
Original Sins (1981)
Kinflicks (1975)


MAGGIE ANDERSON (1948- )
Poems:
Windfall: New and Selected Poems (2000)
A space Filled with Moving (1992)
Cold Comfort (1986)
Years That Answer (1980)


ANNE W. ARMSTRONG (1872-1958)
Novels:
This Day and Time (1930)
The Seas of God (1915)



HARRIETTE SIMPSON ARNOW (1908-86)
Novels:
Between the Flowers (1999)
The Kentucky Trace (1974)
Weedkiller's Daughter (1970)
The Dollmaker (1954)
Hunter's Horn (1949)
Mountain Path (1936)


SYLVIA TRENT AUXIER (1900-67)
Poems:
With thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968)
No Stranger to the Earth (1957)
The grace of the Bough (1957)
Love-Vine (1954)
Meadow-Rue (1948)


MARILOU AWIAKTA (1936- )
Novella:
Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery (1984)

Poetry and Prose:
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom (1993)
Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet (1978)


ARTIE ANN BATES (1953- )
Children's:
Ragsdale (1995)


FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR (1848-1920)
Novels:
The Ladder of Fortune (1900)
Miss Nina Barrow (1897)
Claudia Hyde (1894)
Juan and Juanita (1888)
Behind the Blue Ridge: A Homely Narrative (1887)
On Both Sides (1885)

Short stories:
A Shocking Example and Other Sketches (1889)


SUE ELLEN BRIDGERS (1942- )
Novels:
All We Know of Heaven (1996)
Keeping Christina (1993)
Permanent Connections (1987)
Sara Will (1985)
Notes for Another Life (1981)
All Together Now (1979)
Home Before Dark (1976)


FLORENCE COPE BUSH (1933- )
Non-Fiction:
Dorie: Woman of the Mountains (1992)
If Life Gives You Scraps, Make a Quilt (1992)
Ocona Lufta Baptist: Pioneer Church of the Smokies, 1836-1939 (1990)


KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER (1944- )
Poetry:
Catching Light (2002)
Evelyn (1999)
Black Shawl (1998)
Wildwood Flower (1992)
The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986)
Alma (1983)
Search Party (1979)


CANDIE CARAWAN (1939- )
Non-Fiction:
Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs (1990)
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Freedom Movement (1968)
Ain't You Got a right to the Tree of Life?: The People of John's Island, South Carolina, Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs (1966)


JO CARSON (1946- )
Short stories:
The Last of the 'Waltz Across Texas'and Other Stories (1993)

Poetry:
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet (1989)

Drama:
Whispering to Horses (1996-97)
The Bear Facts (1993)
Daytrips (1991)
Preacher with a Horse to Ride (1990)

Children's:
The Great Shaking: An Account of the Earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 (1994)
You Hold Me and I'll Hold You (1992)
Pulling My Leg (1990)


FEBECCA CAUDILL (1899-1985)
Children's: numerous

Non-Fiction:
My Appalachia: A Reminiscence (1966)


LILLIE D. CHAFFIN (1925-1993)
Poetry:
8th Day, 13th Moon (1974)
Star following (1976)
Lines and Points (1966)
A Stone for Sisyphus (1967)
First Notes (1969)


LOLETTA CLOUSE (1948- )
Novel:
Wilder (1990)


ANN COBB (1885-1960)
Poetry:
Kinfolks: Kentucky Mountain Rhymes (1922)

Children:
An English Christmas (1978)


LIAS COFFMAN (1963- )
Poetry:
Likely (1996)


AMY TIPTON CORTNER (1955- )
Poetry:
The Hillbilly Vampire (1990)


LOU V. D. CRABTREE (1913- )
Short stories:
Sweet Hollow (1984)

Poetry:
The River Hills & Beyond (1998)

Drama:
Calling on Lou (1984)


OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN (FIELDING BURKE) (1869-1968)
Novels:
Highland Annals (1925)
Call Home the Heart (1932)
A Stone Came Rolling (1935)
From My Highest Hill (1941)
Sons of the Stranger (1947)

Short stories:
Innocent Bigamy and Other Stories (1962)

Poetry:
Path Flower and Other Verses (1914)
The Cycle's Rim (1916)
The Spotted Hawk (1958)

Drama:
The Mortal Gods and Other Plays (1912)
The Flutter of the Goldleaf, and Other Plays (1922)


DORIS DAVENPORT (1949- )
Poetry:
it's like this (1980)
eat thunder & drink rain (1982)
voodoo chile: slight return (1991)
Soque Street Poems (1991)
madness like morning glory: poems (2004)


REBECCA HARDING DAVIS (1831-1910)
Novels:
Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862)
Dallas Galbraith (1868)
Pro Aris et Foci: A Plea for Our Altars and Hearths (1870)
John Andross (1874)
Kitty's Choice: A Story of Berrytown (1874)
A Law unto Herself (1878)
Natasqua (1887)
Kent Hampden (1892)
Silhouettes of American Life (1892)
Doctor Warwick's Daughters (1896)
Frances Waldeaux (1897)

Novella:
Life in the Iron Mills (1861)

Autobiography:
Bits of Gossip (1904)


ANN DEAGON (1930- )
Novel:
The Diver's Tomb (1984)

Short stories:
Habitats (1982)

Poetry:
Carbon 14 (1974)
Poetics South (1974)
Indian Summer (1975)
Women and Children First (1976)
There Is No Balm in Birmingham (1978)
The Polo Poems (1990)


ANGELYN DEBORD (1949- )
Drama:
Praise House (1990)
Stubborn Memories (1993)
Homemade Tales: Songs and sayings of Florida Slone (1993)
Lessons on Becoming a Woman (1996)


ANNIE DILLARD (1945- )
Novel:
The Living (1992)

Poetry:
Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974)
Mornings Like This: found Poems (1995)

Non-Fiction:
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Holy the Firm (1977)
Living by Fiction (1982)
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982)
Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984)
An American Childhood (1987)
The Writing Life (1989)
The Annie Dillard Reader (1994)
For the Time Being (1999)


HILDA DOWNER (1956- )
Poetry:
Bandana Creek (1979)
Down to the Wire (200?)


MURIEL MILLER DRESSLER (1918-2000)
Poetry:
Appalachia, My Land (1973)
Appalachia (1977)


WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE (1860-1934)
Fiction:
The Sunny Side of Cumberland (as Will Allen) (1886)
The Malungeons (1891)
The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee (1895)
The Valley Path (1898)
Rare Old Chums (1898)
A Moonshiner's Son (1898)
Hero-Chums (1898)
Cinch, And Other Stories: Tales of Tenessee (1898)
Harum-Scarum Joe (1899)
The Island of Beautiful Things: A Romance of the South (1912)
Short Stories (1970)


WILMA DYKEMAN (1920)
Novels:
The Tall Woman (1962)
The Far Family (1964)
Return to the Innocent Earth (1973)

Non-Fiction: numerous

SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT (1848-1928)
Novels:
The Felmeres (1879)
A Simple Heart (1887)
Jerry (1891)
John Paget (1893)
The Durket Sperret (1898)
The Making of Jane (1901)

Short stories:
An Incident and Other Happenings (1899)


SIDNEY SAYLOR FARR (1932- )
Poetry:
Headwaters (1995)

Non-Fiction:
More than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections (1983)


NIKKY FINNEY (1957- )
Short stories:
Heartwood (1997)

Poetry:
On Wings Made of Gauze (1985)
Rice (1995)


LUCY FURMAN (1870-1958)
Novels:
Sight to the Blind (1914)
The Quare Women (1923)
The Glass Window (1925)
The Lonesome Road (1927)

Short stories:
Stories of a Sanctified Town (1897)
Mothering on Perilous (1913)


DENISE GIARDINA (1951- )
Novels:
Good King Harry (1984)
Storming Heaven (1987)
The Unquiet Earth (1992)
Saints and Villains (1998)
Fallam's Secret (2003)


JANICE HOLT GILES (1909-1979)
Novels:
The Enduring Hills (1950)
Tara's Healing (1951)
The Kentuckians (1953)
The Plum Thicket (1954)
Hill Man (1954)
Hannah Fowler (1956)
The Land Beyond the Mountains (1958)
Johnny Osage (1960)
Savannah (1961)
voyage to Santa Fe (1962)
Run Me a River (1964)
The Great Adventure: A Novel (1966)
Six-Horse Hitch (1971)
Miss Willie (1971)
The Kinta Years (1973)
Well-spring (1975)
The Believers (1976)
Shady Grove (1978)
Act of Contrition (2001)


NIKKI GIOVANNI (1943- )
Poetry:
Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967)
Black Judgement (1968)
Re: Creation (1970)
My House (1972)
The Women and The Men (1975)
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978)
Those Who Ride The Night Winds (1983)
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996)
Love Poems (1997)
Blues: For All the Changes (1999)
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (2002)
The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
Acolytes (2007)
Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)

Children's: numerous


GAIL GODWIN (1937- )
Novels:
A Sorrowful Woman (1971)
Glass People (1972)
The Odd Woman (1974)
Violet Clay (1978)
A Mother and Two Daughters (1982)
The Finishing School (1984)
A Southern Family (1987)
Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1991)
The Good Husband
Evensong (1999)
Evenings at Five (2003)
Queen of the Underworld (2006)

Short stories:
Dream Children (1976)
Mr. Bedford and the Muses (1983)

Non-Fiction:
Heart (2001)


CONNIE JORDAN GREEN (1938- )
Novels:
The War at Home (1989)
Emmy (1992)


VIRGINIA HAMILTON (1936-2002)
Children's:
Zeely (1967)
The Planet of Junior Brown (1971)
M.C. Higgins the Great (1975)
Justice And Her Brothers (1978)
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1983)
Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed (1983)
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985)
A White Romance (1987)
Anthony Burnes (1988)
Cousins (1990)
Drylongso (1992)
Plain City (1998)
Second Cousins (1998)
Bluish: A Novel (1999)
The Girl Who Spun Gold (2000)


PAULETTA HANSEN (1959- )
Poetry:
Divining (2001)


CORRA HARRIS (1869-1935)
Novels:
The Jessica Letters (1904), with Paul Elmer More.
A Circuit Rider's Wife (1910)
Eve's Second Husband (1910)
The Recording Angel (1912)
In Search of a Husband (1913)
The Co-Citizens (1915)
Justice (1915)
A Circuit Rider's Widow (1916)
Making Her His Wife (1918)
From Sunup to Sundown (1919)
In Search of a Husband (1919)
Happily Married (1920)
My Son (1921)
The Eyes of Love (1922)
A Daughter of Adam (1923)
The House of Helen (1923)
My Book and My Heart (1924)
As a Woman Thinks (1925)
The Happy Pilgrimage (1926)


MILDRED HAUN (1911-66)
Short stories:
The Hawk's Done Gone (1940)
The Hawk's done Gone and Other Stories (1968)


ELLESA CLAY HIGH (1948- )
Non-fiction:
Past Titan rock: Journeys into an Appalachian Valley (1984)


MARY BOZEMAN HODGES (1944- )
Short stories:
Tough Customers and Other Stories (1999)


GLORIA HOUSTON
Children's:
Bright Freedom's Song: A Story of the Underground Railroad (1998)
Littlejim's Dreams (1997)
Littlejim's gift: An Appalachian Christmas Story (1994)
Mountain Valor (1994)
My Great-Aunt Arizona (1992)
But No Candy (1992)
Littlejim (1990)
The Year of the perfect Christmas Tree (1988)
My Brother Joey Died (1982)


LEE HOWARD
Poetry:
The Last Unmined Vein (1980)


MARY JOHNSTON (1870-1936)
Novels:
Prisoners of Hope (1898)
To Have and to Hold (1900)
Audrey (1902)
Pioneers of the Old South (1903)
Sir Mortimer (1904)
The Goddess of Reason (1907)
Lewis Rand (1908)
The Long Roll (1911)
Cease Firing (1912)
Hagar (1913)
The Witch (1914)
The Fortunes of Garin (1915)
The Wanderers (1917)
Foes (1918)
Michael Forth (1919)
Sweet Rocket (1920)
Silver Cross (1921)
1492 (1922)
The Great Valley (1926)
The Exile (1927)
Miss Delicia Allen (1932)


MARY HARRIS 'MOTHER' JONES (1837-1930)
The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1995)
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones (1988)
The Correspondence of Mother Jones (1985)


JANE WILSON JOYCE (1947- )
Poetry:
Beyond the Blue Mountains (1992)


MAY JUSTUS (1898-1989)
Children's: numerous

EDITH SUMMERS KELLEY (1884-1956)
Novels:
The Devil's Hand (1974)
Weeds (1923)


LEATHA KENDRICK (1949- )
Poetry:
Second Opinion (2008)
Heart Cake (2000)



BARBARA KINGSOLVER (1955- )
Novels:
The Lacuna (2009)
Prodigal Summer (2000)
The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
High Tide in Tucson (1995)
Pigs in Heaven (1993)
Another America (1992)
Animal Dreams (1990)
The Bean Trees (1988)

Short stories:
Homeland and Other Stories (1989)

Essays:
Small Wonder: Essays (2002)


LISA KOGER (1953- )
Short stories:
Farlanburg Stories (1990)

CATHERINE LANDIS (1956- )
Novel:
Some Days There's Pie (2002)
Harvest (2004)


LILY MAY LEDFORD (1917-85)
Autobiography:
Coon Creek Girl (1980)


GRACE LUMPKIN (1891-1980)
Novels:
Full Circle (1962)
The Wedding (1939)
A Sign for Cain (1935)
To Make My Bread (1932)


GEORGE ELLA LYON
Novels:
With a Hammer for My Heart (1996)
Here and Then (1994)
Catalpa (1993)
Red Rover (1989) (published as The Stranger I Left behind Me, 1997)
Borrowed Children (1988)


Poetry:
Growing Light (1987)
Mountain (1983)


LINDA PARSONS MARION (1953- )
Poetry:
Home Fires (1997)


CATHERINE MARSHALL (1914-83)
Fiction:
Julie (1984)
Christy (1967)


BELINDA ANN MASON (1958-91)
Drama:
Gifts of the Spirit (1988)


KATHY L. MAY (1952- )
Poetry:
Door to the River (1992)


TRUDA WILLIAMS McCOY (1902-74)
Poetry:
Till the Frost (1962)
The Tempter's Harvest (1954)

Non-fiction:
The McCoys: Their Story as Told to the Author by Eye Witnesses and Descendants (1976)


SHARYN McCRUMB (1948- )
Novels (Ballad Series):
Ghost Riders (2003)
The Songcatcher (2001)
The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1998)
The Rosewood Casket (1996)
She Walks These Hills (1994)
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1992)
If every I return, Pretty Peggie-O (1990)