A title from West Virginia University Press lands, for the first time, in the New Yorker, where Deesha Philyaw’s “beguiling” The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is recommended by Doreen St. Félix as part of the “What We’re Reading This Summer” feature. Philyaw also appears in Raj Tawney’s op-ed for NBC News Online about navigating publishing as a writer of color. Tawney finds inspiration in Philyaw’s work, and refers to her publisher as “small-yet-fierce West Virginia University Press.” Our small, fierce team remains grateful to the many readers worldwide who continue to find new ways to celebrate Secret Lives!

Neema Avashia’s Another Appalachia is named Book of the Day by the New York Public Library, and included on the list “20 Must-Read Under-the-Radar Queer Books from the First Half of 2022” from Book Riot. Avashia talks with Mom Egg Review, and her book is recommended by booksellers at Cicada Books in a feature in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch.

Kristine Langley Mahler’s Curing Season is anticipated on the list “What to Read When You’ve Made it Halfway Through 2022” from the Rumpus. Watch for launch events in Omaha, Des Moines, and elsewhere on Mahler’s calendar.

The podcast from Change Seven Magazine talks with Charles Dodd White, author of A Year without Months.

John Warner devotes his column in Inside Higher Ed to Aeron Haynie and Stephanie Spong’s “indispensable” Teaching Matters: A Guide for Graduate Students.

In other news from our higher education series, Kevin Gannon, author of Radical Hope, appears on the Tea for Teaching podcast, and Jessamyn Neuhaus, editor of Picture a Professor and author of Geeky Pedagogy, talks with the podcast Teaching for Student Success.

The Journal of Appalachian Studies praises Shaun Slifer’s “wonderfully weighty” So Much to Be Angry About, saying it’s a “great foundational book.”

Kate Daniels’s Slow Fuse of the Possible is called “beautiful and harrowing” in the Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.

The AAG Review of Books finds Feminist Geography Unbound “diverse and engaging.”

And in Madison, WORT radio talks with Sophie Bjork-James, coeditor of Beyond Populism, about the contested meanings of Independence Day.

We’ve updated our calendar with book events in West Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and more. And on July 17, don’t miss William H. Turner, author of The Harlan Renaissance, on CNN’s United Shades of America episode on “Black in Appalachia”!