Leah Hampton (September 21, 1973) is a writer. She writes primarily about Appalachia, class, and climate change. [1] [2] Her debut collection, F*ckface, was named a Best Book of 2020 by Slate, Electric Literature, and PopMatters. [3] She is currently the Environmental Humanities and Creative Writing Fellow in Residence at the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab. [4]
Hampton was primarily raised in Western North Carolina. [5] She holds dual US/UK citizenship. [2]
She was awarded the Philip Roth Residency at the Stadler Center for Poetry in the spring of 2020 [6]
She graduated with her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature. [7] She has also won regional prizes, including the Doris Betts Fiction Prize and the James Hurst Prize for Fiction which are both for writers who are living in or are from North Carolina. [8] [9]
Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Ron Rash is an American poet, short story writer and novelist and the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University.
Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer.
Nathalie Handal is a French-American poet, writer and professor, described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” A New Yorker and a quintessential global citizen, she has published 10 prize-winning books, including Life in a Country Album. She is praised for her “diverse, and innovative body of work.”
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.
Ann Pancake is an American fiction writer and essayist. She has published a novel, short stories and essays describing the people and atmosphere of Appalachia, often from the first-person perspective of those living there. While fictional, her short stories contribute to an understanding of poverty in the 20th century, and well as the historical roots of American and rural poverty. Much of Pancake's writing also focuses on the destruction caused by natural resource extraction, particularly in Appalachia, and the lives of the people affected.
West Virginia University Press is a university press and publisher in the state of West Virginia. A part of West Virginia University, the press publishes books and journals with a particular emphasis on Appalachian studies, history, higher education, the social sciences, and interdisciplinary books about energy, environment, and resources. The press also has a small but highly regarded program in fiction and creative nonfiction, including Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, winner of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, winner of the Story Prize 2020/21, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2020. John Warner wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "If you are wondering what the odds are of a university press book winning three major awards, being a finalist for a fourth, and going to a series on a premium network, please know that this is the only example." In 2021, another of WVU Press's works of fiction, Jim Lewis's Ghosts of New York, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. WVU Press also collaborates on digital publications, notably West Virginia History: An Open Access Reader.
Idra Novey is an American novelist, poet, and translator. She translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Persian and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Alessandro Portelli is an Italian scholar of American literature and culture, oral historian, writer for the daily newspaper il manifesto, and musicologist. He is a professor of Anglo-American literature at the University of Rome La Sapienza. In the United States he is best known for his oral history work, which has compared workers' accounts of industrial conflicts in Harlan County, Kentucky, and Terni, Italy. In 2014–15, he was a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University, co-teaching a course on Bruce Springsteen's America.
Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.
Leah Song is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, artist, and activist known for her role as one of the two frontsisters of Rising Appalachia — with younger sister Chloe Smith — incorporating sultry vocals, rhythm, banjo, guitar, ballads, dance, spoken-word and storytelling into her work. Her music is based in the traditions of Southern soul and international roots music.
Chloe Smith is an American singer, multi-instrumental musician, and activist, known for her role as one of the two lead vocalists of Rising Appalachia alongside her older sister Leah Song. Her music, which incorporates sultry vocals, rhythm, banjo, guitar, and fiddle, is based in the traditions of Southern soul and international roots music.
Jim Wayne Miller was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.
David Joy is an American novelist and short-story writer.
Anthony Tognazzini is an American short story writer.
Rivers Solomon is an American author of speculative and literary fiction. In 2018, they received the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award in Fiction for their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and in 2020 their second novel, The Deep, won the Lambda Literary Award. Their third novel, Sorrowland, was published in May 2021, and won the Otherwise Award.
Ashleigh Shanti is an American chef and sommelier. She is a freelance chef. Shanti specializes in African American foodways, including Black Appalachian cuisine. From 2018 until 2020 she was the chef de cuisine of Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina.
Kristen Arnett is an American fiction author and essayist. Her debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, was a New York Times bestseller.
Jenny Bhatt is an Indian American writer, literary translator, and literary critic. She is the author of an award-winning story collection, Each of Us Killers, an award-shortlisted literary translation, Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, and the literary translation, The Shehnai Virtuoso and Other Stories by Dhumketu. She is the founder of Desi Books, a global multimedia platform for South Asian literature, and a creative writing instructor at Writing Workshops Dallas.
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is a Japanese and Kanaka Maoli author. She is the author of the story collection Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare, an instant USA Today National Bestseller, named an Indies Introduce title and a September Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association, and a Best Book of 2023 by Powells Books. The collection consists of eleven short stories about Hawaiian women. She is the Fiction Editor for No Tokens Journal, and a faculty member at Antioch University's MFA Program.