Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy is reviewed by Dwight Garner in the New York Times. He calls it “the most sustained pushback to Vance’s book . . . thus far,” and “a volley of intellectual buckshot from high up alongside the hollow.” Robert Gipe, a contributor to the volume, also appears in the Times with his op-ed piece “Appalachia Is More Diverse Than You Think.” This much-talked-about book receives additional reviews in the Daily Yonder and Chapter 16 from Humanities Tennessee, and Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers interviews the volume editors for Foreword Reviews. The title’s Morgantown launch event is available to view in its entirety thanks to the WVU College of Law.
Michael Clay Carey’s The News Untold received the Weatherford Award for the year’s best nonfiction book about Appalachia from Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association. Tom Hansell’s After Coal was a runner-up. WVU Press is fortunate to have received two Weatherford Awards in the last three years, and to have had four finalists.
Foreword Reviews calls LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia “an immersive exploration of queer life within the confines of a conservative American subculture.” Editors Jeff Mann and Julia Watts will join contributors to the volume for a launch event at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC, on April 22.
Also in Foreword Reviews, Cassandra Kircher’s Far Flung is praised as a collection of “intimate and moving essays on nature, family, and adventures in the wild.”
In the Georgia Review, Jessica Smith writes: “Admirers of Muriel Rukeyser have been waiting for a reprint of The Book of the Dead, long out of print, and West Virginia University Press’s new edition does not disappoint.” The Book of the Dead is also included on a list of the most iconic poems in English compiled by LitHub.
Still: The Journal praises Natalie Sypolt’s “gritty and tenderhearted” The Sound of Holding Your Breath. Sypolt is interviewed by the blog Speaking of Marvels.
Andrew and Alex Lichtenstein’s Marked, Unmarked, Remembered is reviewed in the Journal of American History, which celebrates both the volume’s text (“the essays are revelations”) and photographs (“extraordinary and compelling”).
Ronald Lewis, coauthor of Walter F. White: The NAACP’s Ambassador for Racial Justice, is interviewed by New Books Network, and his book is deemed “highly recommended” by Choice.
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sarah Rose Cavanagh, author of The Spark of Learning, offers advice on “How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging.”
This spring WVU Press’s authors are coming to Atlanta, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and more. Keep up with all the latest on our calendar.