Author: abbyfreeland

On fracking: A writer’s revolt against an extractive industry in West Virginia

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Laura Leigh Morris is an assistant professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where she teaches creative writing and literature. Before that, she spent three years as the National Endowment for the Arts/Bureau of Prisons Artist-in-Residence at Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. She’s previously published short fiction in Appalachian Heritage, the Louisville Review, the Notre Dame Review, and other journals. She is originally from north central West Virginia. Jaws of Life, now available, is her debut book.

I sat in the backseat of my parents’ car, my eyes on the road, an attempt to stave off motion sickness on the winding roads between Wetzel and Marion Counties. We were on our way back from visiting my great-aunt and -uncle in Rymer. We rounded the hundredth curve only to be blinded by lights—1000+ watt industrial lights that allowed hydraulic fracturing to continue 24 hours/day.

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Notes from a first-time novelist

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Heather signs copies of Maranatha Road at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Heather Bell Adams is from Hendersonville, North Carolina, and now lives in Raleigh with her husband and son. She is the winner of the 2016 James Still Fiction Prize and her short fiction appears in the Thomas Wolfe Review, Clapboard House, Pembroke Magazine, Broad River Review, and elsewhere. Maranatha Road is her first novel and is the winner of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild Contest  Find Heather on Twitter: @heatherbelladam.

On the heels of the publication of my first novel, Maranatha Road, I’m grateful to share an inside look at how we got here.

The manuscript took about a year to write and, along the way, I received helpful feedback from novelist Amy Greene, whom I greatly admire. She was leading a workshop through the Appalachian Writing Project and, when my work obligations got cancelled at the last minute, I could take time off to attend. Amy’s encouragement fueled a mad dash to “the end” and then, of course, the real work of revising began.Read More »