In the first published review of The Painted Forest, forthcoming in our series In Place, Publishers Weekly praises Krista Eastman’s “thoughtful and elegant” prose, saying her “deep fascination with and love of her home state, in all its complexity and eccentricity, permeate this moving book and will live on in the reader’s mind.” Eastman launches The Painted Forest in Wisconsin in October. Details from Wisconsin Public Radio.
Bitter Southerner features “Hillbillies Need No Elegy”—a major essay by Meredith McCarroll, coeditor of Appalachian Reckoning, with photography by Roger May—along with an excerpt from the volume by contributor Ivy Brashear. The book makes Iowa Public Radio’s summer reading list, and is reviewed—alongside Matthew Ferrence’s “thoughtful, meditative” Appalachia North—in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Appalachia North is positively reviewed, as well, on Brevity‘s nonfiction blog, which also praises Cassandra Kircher’s “inventive and supple” Far Flung.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, Pittsburgh Current interviews volume editors Jeff Mann and Julia Watts about LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia, “a testament to the survival of Appalachian LGBTQ folks.”
At West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Glynis Board talks with Jessica Cory, Ann Pancake, and Rick Van Noy about the collection Mountains Piled upon Mountains. The piece is also picked up by 100 Days in Appalachia. Cory is interviewed in Asheville’s Mountain Xpress ahead of events at Malaprop’s and other bookstores this summer and early fall.
Two forthcoming titles in our series on teaching and learning are featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Susan D. Blum, editor of our book on “ungrading,” is profiled in “Grades Can Hinder Learning. What Should Professors Use Instead?” And Viji Sathy and Kelly A. Hogan, who are writing a book for the series on inclusive teaching practices, offer the guide “Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive.”
In other teaching and learning news, the higher ed platform Top Hat talks with Sarah Cavanagh, author of The Spark of Learning; the podcast Tea for Teaching interviews Cyndi Kernahan about her forthcoming Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom; and EdSurge anticipates Derek Bruff’s Intentional Tech.
To the Bones is reviewed in the Salisbury Post, the Wilmington Star News, and the West Virginia Observer, which calls it “an entertaining supernatural thriller about all-too-real threats.” Author Valerie Nieman appears on the program Shelf Life from City Books in Pittsburgh, and is touring extensively this summer and fall.
The Journal of Appalachian Studies praises four of WVU’s titles: Travis Stimeling’s Songwriting in Contemporary West Virginia (“a great view into the minds of some of the most prolific musicians in the state”), Natalie Sypolt’s The Sound of Holding Your Breath (a “richly rooted debut collection”), Sharon Harris’s Rebecca Harding Davis (“invaluable”), and Jonathan Corcoran’s The Rope Swing (“masterfully crafted”).
Doug Van Gundy and Laura Long’s Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods is judged an “extraordinary anthology” in Appalachian Journal, which continues: “The writing is as complex and diverse as all the people who have ever called [West Virginia] home.”
Keep up with all of our events—including Meredith Sue Willis, Valerie Nieman, and Marc Harshman at McNally Jackson Booksellers in New York—on our calendar.