The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is featured on NPR’s All Things Considered (“Whatever we call the new American short story, I think Deesha Philyaw should name it”), in Book Riot, and in Mississippi Today. As part of the Buzzfeed guide “58 Great Books to Read This Summer,” bookseller Sydne Conant of Madison’s indie bookstore A Room of One’s Own recommends the title. Philyaw’s book is also among several topics addressed in the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s article “A Big Book from a Little Press,” which calls WVU Press “a new publishing heavyweight.”

Jim Lewis’s Ghosts of New York is reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle, where it’s praised as “a collection of connected stories that is so imbued with the city in which it’s set that it could not possibly have taken place anywhere else.”

Chuck Keeney, author of The Road to Blair Mountain, is interviewed in Jacobin and (with Catherine Venable Moore, who introduced our edition of The Book of the Dead) on the podcast from the Smithsonian. Keeney and Moore will be joined by Anne T. Lawrence and Ginny Savage Ayers for the WVU Press showcase “New Books About the Mine Wars,” cohosted with the WVU Humanities Center and Taylor Books, on September 4.

William H. Turner’s forthcoming book is reviewed in Daily Yonder, which says: “One of the oldest and most enduring myths about the Appalachian Mountains is that they are now and always have been overwhelmingly populated by white Scots-Irish. Dr. William H. Turner has written a new book, The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns, that kills that myth about whiteness and, for good measure, buries several more myths as well.” The piece is picked up by 100 Days in Appalachia.

Public Books features “How to Dream Beyond Oil,” a think-piece inspired by two of Imre Szeman’s books with WVU Press: On Petrocultures and Energy Culture.

American Vaudeville lands among Playbill‘s “17 Theatre Reads to Enjoy in Summer 2021.” It is excerpted by the Avidly channel from the Los Angeles Review of Books, and author Geoffrey Hilsabeck is interviewed at the blog from New York’s indie bookstore Book Culture.

Renée K. Nicholson, author of Fierce and Delicate, talks with the Southern Review of Books and with radio program Conversations Live with Cyrus Webb. She participates in the Five Questions series with the WVU Alumni Association.

Jenae Cohn, author of Skim, Dive, Surface, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education about educational technology and, in a second piece, about preparation for hybrid teaching. Her book is front-and-center in the Chronicle when it is recommended as a prompt to rethink digital reading. Cohn also appears on the podcasts Tea for Teaching and Leading Lines.

In other news from our series Teaching and Learning in Higher Education:

• John Warner, writing in Inside Higher Ed, recommends two books in the series, by Jenae Cohn and Susan D. Blum.
• Susan Hrach, author of Minding Bodies, is featured in the ACUE blog and in the podcasts Lecture Breakers and Tea for Teaching.
• In All Things reviews Susan D. Blum’s Ungrading, which it calls “rich in detail and experience.”
• Cyndi Kernahan, author of Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom, is coauthor of the op-ed piece “We Can’t Tackle Racial Issues if We Can’t Teach about Racism” for the Capital Times.

Still reviews Storytelling in Queer Appalachia, calling it “important work to have on the bookshelf for those interested in Appalachia, queer studies, or anyone wanting to contribute to a more equitable world.”

The Hindman School’s feature “Must Reads from Appalachian LGBTQ+ Voices” includes our “first of its kind” collection LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia. The book is also reviewed (alongside The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) in Pittsburgh Magazine, where it’s called a “thoughtful collection.”

Joanna Eleftheriou, author of This Way Back, is featured in the Common Online and interviewed in True Magazine.

College and Research Libraries reviews Shaun Slifer’s “informative” and “valuable” So Much to Be Angry About.

Keep up with the latest WVU Press author events on our calendar, don’t miss the theatrical reading from Geoffrey Hilsabeck’s American Vaudeville just posted to YouTube, and remember our 30% off sale runs through July 31 with code SUMMERREADS at checkout!