Ron Rash: Serena (2008)

Ron Rash's Serena comes with many snippets from reviews, the Guardian's mentioning the author in the same breath as Cormac McCarthy and Charles Frazier, and I think Frazier is particularly significant as he is writing about the same geographical area. This powerful book certainly has an atmosphere of myth, or possibly, as one reviewer pointed out, of Shakespearian tragedy. Except that Serena is not a tragic figure – she's a psychopath.

And by proxy, she's a violent serial killer too, and the book begins where it ends: with an act of revenge, only the revenge at the beginning is turned against its unfortunate would-be perpetrator. To clarify: this is in the late 1920s in the North Carolina mountains, and Pemberton the logging company owner (whose forename is virtually never spoken, even by his wife) returns from a journey to Boston with his new wife Serena, who automatically expects her trophy husband to despatch the knife-toting, vengeful father Harmon, whose (as yet unnamed) daughter is visibly pregnant – by Pemberton, as everyone knows. So Harmon cuts Pemberton's arm a little and Pemberton slits Harmon's belly deeply and his intestines fall out: job done, time to show the wife her spartan new home.

Serena and Pemberton are a match made in hell, and the logging company proceeds to ride roughshod over anyone who stands in their way, cares nothing for its workers (well, this is the Depression and labor is cheap), and their only interest is in money and power, along with frequent 'coupling' with each other, as the narrator insists on calling it. If the merciless nature of the environment won't kill the men then (if they don't worship at the altar of Serena) then Serena knows a man who will kill them, and when she can't with impunity get Pemberton to kill for her, she'll get her henchman Galloway to do the job instead.

One of the minor characters in the book is a representation of Horace Kephart, who was the prime mover in the establishing of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and although he's the 'natural' enemy of the mass tree-felling Serena and husband, the novel of course doesn't  distort history and have him killed off by Galloway.

A strong symbol of Serena's power is the eagle she trains to kill rattle snakes, and even a dragon: the violent language is firmly rooted in the real, and this helps the reader to maintain that suspension of disbelief. And it's the eagle that hovers over the narrative drive, creating a fear in the reader that the bird will somehow destroy two of the few sympathetic characters in the novel: Rachel Harmon and her young child. This fear grows as Serena learns that she can't have a child and she seeks to have Rachel and the child killed.

Rash does suspense well, and as Pemberton reveals his tragic 'flaw' – his humanity, because he sees to it that Rachel gets enough money to escape to Seattle with their child, who conveniently looks like his double – Serena finds out and (via Galloway, of course) packs Pemberton off on an everlasting day trip with rat poison sandwiches; his death is made even more painful by a chance encounter with a deadly poisonous snake.

The story has another sting in its tail: forty-five years later (in a coincidence the reader just has to put up with in his or her honorable lust for revenge) Rachel happens to read about the timber baroness Serena, the 75-year-old Amazon who has been making financial killings in the Amazon for decades. This of course is the cue for Rachel's son to hop on a train to Sao Paulo (which, it perhaps goes without saying, mirrors Pemberton's train ride from Boston at the beginning), where he descends and swiftly slits Serena's bodyguard's throat and drives into her belly the knife that killed his grandfather. In a final poignant touch, Ron Rash leaves us with the image of the knife fast inside the still-standing Serena. Only she's now dead.

The movie adaptation, with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as the Pembertons and directed by Susanne Bier, is due for release at the end of September 2013.

My post on Horace Kephart and his grave:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Horace Kephart and Bryson City, North Carolina

A Celebration of Outsiders: Museum of Appalachia, Norris, near Clinton, Tennessee: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #1

More than once before, I've quoted Lee Smith about Appalachia being - and I paraphrase wildly - a kind of outsider's outsider. John Rice Irwin, whose ancestors were descended from pioneer settlers in the Big Valley of East Tennessee in the early years of the 18th century, is the founder and President of Museum of Appalachia in Norris, near Clinton, Tennessee. It is a remarkable place, started in the late 1960s, and is an accumulation of a vast amount of historical heritage that has grown from a mere two to 65 acres. Many of the exhibits are log structures, and many of them contain a large number of artifacts used by the mountain folk. The museum stands as a huge tribute to these people, many of them previously unsung.

Gwen's Little Playhouse was built by Will Elkins, who was a neighbor hired by Gwen's father, James C. Hubbard. It was much envied by local children, and it is very fortunate that is survived: the Tennessee Valley Authority had bought up several thousand acres of land to drown, but this was the only building that was saved. The theatre was in New Loyston, 15 miles east of the museum, and was given to it in 2008 by the 84-year-old Gwen Hubbard Sharp.

One of the endearing features of Museum of Appalachia is the Appalachian Hall of Fame, which contains a wealth of information about, and exhibits of, Appalachian life and Appalachian people. Many ot these people became well known nationwide, particularly country and blue grass musicians. Other people are a little less well known, such as the Cherokee Nancy Ward, whose first husband, Kingfisher, was killed in a battle. But his wife went on to be a woman of great influence. She later married a British trader, Brian Ward, and became renowned for her efforts as a peacemaker, bringing about a greater tolerance between the Cherokees and the settlers. She spent most of her life in Choka, the Cherokee capital near Loudon. R. Sterling King wrote a book about her, The Wild Rose of Cherokee: or Nancy Ward, 'The Pocahontas of the West':

But the Hall of Fame's strength is the attention it gives to ordinary, unknown people, who in the end are not so ordinary at all.
 
Toward the entrance of the Hall of Fame is a large placard containing the photos of many people, and John Rice Irwin's words:
 

'Pictured here are my friends: the warm, happy, independent folk of Southern Appalachia. They are my people and the people I love, and it was because of them and people like them that I started the Museum of Appalachia. And it is to them that this Hall of Fame is dedicated.'

One such friend was Tom Carter (1910-81), whose mother's bust he carved, and is shown above. Tom also wrote a poem about his mother, who lived in Duffield, south-west Virginia:

Ode to Appalachian Mother

TIME SOUNDED
as you arose in the mountains
and gave us birth.

Your earth wisdom, your toil and love
gave us food, clothing and shelter.

Wise in the way of TIME,
you endured fire and ice, joy and agony,
working always, tending us ever,

Soft in Love, determined in righteous-
ness, with unyielding integrity, you
held us firm in the search for
THE GREAT WHITE LIGHT.

You exalt the mountains!
The mountains exalt you!
Transcending self,
Thunder sounds your name.

Being tired, but trusting our strength,
you looked upward saying:
'Lord, my work is done.

Let me come home.'

Troy Webb lived in Clairfield, Tennessee, and lost a leg digging coal near his home. Although he returned to the mines after, he relaxed by whittling wood, and the objects he created are now much sought after.

Irwin calls Mary Dennings Bumgarthner a 'saintly little lady', and briefly notes that she lived just three miles south of the museum with her husband Lee, on a steep hillside in Faust Hollow.

The former one-room home of Tom Cassidy (1920-89), of Beard Valley, Union County, Tennessee. Eighteen years after Cassidy's death, Irwin found his cabin exactly as he had left it. Cassidy considered that a person had no need for more than this: a bed, a stove for heating and cooking, a frying pan, a dresser, a fiddle, and a pistol.

The sign reads: 'These two cells, dated 1874, each designed to hold four prisoners were used in the small east Tenn. town of Madisonville. On Dec. 20, 1917, Will Upton and his uncle Drew Upton were taken from one of them and hanged as they sang 'I'm Coming Home'.

Henry Harrison Mayes was a coalminer by profession and a soul-saver by obsession. He put religious markers in many states, drawing the places he'd chosen on a large map of the USA. To say the least, his ideas were eccentric. Most of the images below speak for themselves.

Mayes's door knob had a cover which opened to reveal a rather predictable message:

The uncovering.

The Mark Twain Family Cabin, formerly belonging to Twain's father John Clemens, which was transported from Possum Trot in Fortress County, where John owned much land and where he was postmaster.

The interior.

Big Tater Valley School, which was transported from Big Tater Valley.

Inside the school.

A privy, this one built with two holes.

This is one of them.

A reconstruction of the Peters House and Homestead. Nathaniel Peters lived in this house in the nearby village of Lutrell, where he brought up nine children and died at the age of 87.

From left to right, Carol Ostrom, Gene Brewer, and Anna Denison play Appalachian music on the verandah of the Homestead Smokehouse and Granary.

A slave cabin unopened as yet.

The infamous Popcorn Sutton's whiskey still. Popcorn* lived in North Carolina in the Smoky Mountains and had made moonshine all his adult life. In Museum of Appalachia's annual Homecoming event in 2003, Sutton made moonshine there, although he was told that he was not allowed to hand out samples of the whiskey, which he ignored and handed it out anyway.

When the police insisted that he stop, he took his equipment and left. Later, he was convicted of selling illicit whisky and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. As he had years before served a few months imprisonment for a similar offence, and having no desire to return to a 'caged animal' status, he gassed himself with carbon monoxide from his truck on 15 March 2009, a day before he was due to begin his term.

Popcorn's book, Me and My Likker: The True Story of a Mountain Moonshiner, was published in 1999 by Shockwave. It was re-published this year by his daughter Sky, in a spiral-bound edition that is numbered and is now virtually out of print.

*Popcorn earned his nickname by putting a pool cue to a malfunctioning popcorn machine.

This sundial is from Tennessee Williams's great-grandfather's sunken garden in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In the shop at the end of the tour, I was flicking through a coffee table book about the Appalachian Trail, which is 2174 miles long and stretches from Mount Springer in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. A voice a few feet away from me said 'I've done that', and I looked up to see a woman who turns out to be in her eighties, although she certainly didn't look it. When she was in her sixties, and a widow, she spent several months walking the trail, camping along the way.  And she said she still wore her wedding ring as she was too old for dating. You meet some interesting characters in the mountains.

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

13 July 2010

Southern Appalachia: James Still - River of Earth

I've quoted the wonderful Lee Smith before, and I don't think she'll come after me with a copyright hammer for repeating what she says about River of Earth (1940), a novel by James Still (1906-2001), simply because any amount of publicity for either Smith or Still can only be of benefit to all concerned:

'[T]he beautiful and heartbreaking novel "River of Earth" [is] a kind of Appalachian "Grapes of Wrath" chronicling the Baldridge family's desperate struggle to survive when the mines close and the crops fail. This is not only one of the best Appalachian novels ever written, but it is also one of the best novels ever written.

'And yet James Still is not usually taught in so-called Southern literature classes.

'Why not?

'Because 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. All of this is wrong; none of this is true.

'And I am here to tell all you people who are visiting Atlanta for the first time: You may think you're in the South, but you're not in the only South. There's another South, an almost secret South, waiting for you. All you have to do is get in a car and drive north, up into the beautiful wild mountains of North Georgia. Come on up and see us in North Carolina, in east Tennessee and Kentucky, and southwest Virginia and West Virginia.'

Lee is so right: if the South is the America of the outsider, Appalachia is the South's outsider. Appalachia is steeped in a widely unread literary wealth, of which James Still's novel River of Earth is a classic. But at the same time, it is easy to see why it is a neglected classic: it contains none of the Appalachian feud clichés or crude remarks about interbreeding, or details about moonshining, and is more a collection of stories than a single one. But it describes the dilemma of making a viable existence in the mountains as opposed to the ephemerally more lucrative lure of the mines in the lowlands.

And the unfamiliar vocabulary is difficult for some readers, although many linguistic nuances are very accessible: in Appalachian-speak, there seems to be a tendency to overcompensate for literacy skills by saying, for instance, 'hain't' and 'hit' for 'ain't' and 'it', as well as to say 'tuck' for 'took'.

Still's writing is not only a world away from more familiar Southern writing, but even a world away from better-known Appalachian novels such as John Fox Jr's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908). It is a world well worth discovering.

18 February 2010

Dennis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (1995)

My comment on this will have to wait until I've actually read it, but in the meantime how about this quote from Fannie Flagg, who, the flap informs anyone who wasn't already aware, is the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café:

'Salvation on Sand Mountain will jar you to the bone. It will make you wonder about things you never thought to wonder about and meet people you never dreamed existed. Dennis Covington is either the bravest or the craziest journalist I know.'

The back flap is even more exuberant:

'With grace and humor and exquisite writing, Dennis Covington explores a physical and spiritual geography few readers will be prepared for. Reminiscent of the best of Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers and James Agee, Salvation on Sand Mountain is southern literature at its best.'

OK, my own comments to come later, as with Madison Jones below (although they will come sooner).

10 January 2010

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)