George Palmer Garrett was an American poet and novelist. He was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2004. His novels include The Finished Man, Double Vision, and the Elizabethan Trilogy, composed of Death of the Fox, The Succession, and Entered from the Sun. He worked as a book reviewer and screenwriter, and taught at Cambridge University and, for many years, at the University of Virginia. He is the subject of critical books by R. H. W. Dillard, Casey Clabough, and Irving Malin.
Sharyn McCrumb is an American writer whose books celebrate the history and folklore of Appalachia. McCrumb is the winner of numerous literary awards, and the author of the Elizabeth McPherson mystery series, the Ballad series, and the St. Dale series.
Richard Henry Wilde Dillard was an American poet, author, critic, and translator.
Cathryn ("Cathy") Hankla is an American poet, novelist, essayist and author of short stories. She is professor emerita of English and Creative Writing at Hollins University in Hollins, Virginia, and served as inaugural director of Hollins' Jackson Center for Creative Writing from 2008 to 2012.
Irene McKinney was an American poet and editor, and served as the Poet Laureate of the state of West Virginia from her appointment by Governor Gaston Caperton in January 1994 until her death.
Silas Dwane House is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. House's fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working-class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. House is known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners and is certainly among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.
Scott Clifford Cairns is an American poet, memoirist, librettist, and essayist.
Bruce Bond is an American poet and creative writing educator at the University of North Texas.
Theodore Russell Weiss was an American poet, and literary magazine editor.
Adrian Blevins is an American poet. Author of three collections of poetry, her most recent is Appalachians Run Amok, winner of the 2016 Wilder Prize. Her other full-length poetry collections are Live from the Homesick Jamboree and The Brass Girl Brouhaha. With Karen McElmurray, Blevins recently co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia, a collection of essays of new and emerging Appalachian poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers. Her chapbooks are Bloodline and The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, which won the first of Bright Hill Press's chapbook contests..
The James Dickey Review is a biannual literary magazine edited by Casey Clabough. It was established by Joyce Pair as the James Dickey Newsletter at DeKalb College in 1984. In 2007 the magazine moved to the University of South Carolina. From 2016 it is published by Reinhardt University.
Neal Bowers is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, and scholar. He received the B.A. (1970) and M.A. (1971) from Austin Peay State University and the Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Florida (1976). He taught for thirty-one years at Iowa State University, earning the highest academic rank awarded by the university, Distinguished Professor. His regular courses included creative writing and modern and contemporary poetry. He retired from teaching in 2008.
Jill Talbot is an American essayist and writer of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Talbot is the author of Loaded: Women and Addiction, and The Way We Weren't, co-editor of The Art of Friction: Where (Non)fictions Come Together (University of Texas Press, 2008), and the editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction.
Karen Salyer McElmurray is an American writer of creative nonfiction and literary fiction. Her works include Wanting Radiance, The Motel of the Stars: A Novel, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, as well as numerous essays and short stories. McElmurray was Editor’s Pick by Oxford American in November 2009. She was the recipient of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction (2003), and the Lillie Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing (2001).
Jim Wayne Miller was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.
Diane Simmons is an American author. She won the Oregon Book Award in for her novel Dreams Like Thunder, and the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction for Little America. She teaches English at the City University of New York (CUNY). She published a biography of Caribbean author Jamaica Kincaid, which was based on her doctoral dissertation at CUNY.
Seth Clabough is an American fiction writer and author of the novel All Things Await, which was nominated for the 2017 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.
William Garrett Wright is an American poet, editor, and writer. Raised in Edgefield, South Carolina, Wright has worked as an educator at institutions such as Emory University, Oxford College at Emory University, and The University of Tennessee. His poems have been published in Oxford American, AGNI, Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, and Shenandoah, among others. His first book of poetry, Dark Orchard, was published in 2005. His third book, Tree Heresies, was released in 2015 and won Wright the 2016 Georgia Author of the Year (Poetry) award. Specter Mountain, a collaborative volume of poems written with Jesse Graves, won the Appalachian Book of the Year award in 2019.
Richard Clay Reynolds was a Texan novelist, essayist, book critic and English professor. Author of more than 10 books of fiction, five books of nonfiction, hundreds of published essays and 1000+ critical book reviews, he lived and taught at universities in Texas and elsewhere.
The University of South Carolina Press is an academic publisher associated with the University of South Carolina. It was founded in 1944.
