In the final post for #UPWeek 2023, the University Press of Kentucky is pleased to spotlight Mandi Fugate Sheffel, owner of the Read Spotted Newt. As an independent bookseller in eastern Kentucky, Mandi values the importance of sharing stories and diverse voices in the region. In this powerful guest post, Mandi expresses her love of books, language, and her devotion and commitment to serving and representing the Appalachia region.
The first novel I fell in love with was Catherine Marshall’s Christy. Originally published in 1968, my copy was a mass-market paperback with Kellie Martin as Christy on the cover. It’s a TV tie-in rereleased for the 1994 CBS television series. As a thirteen-year-old girl living in eastern Kentucky, it wasn’t the book protagonist Christy Huddleston that I could relate to most. I knew nothing about being a missionary in Appalachia. I’d never attended a one-room school or experienced mountain life during the turn of the century. But I knew Cutter Gap, the fictional town that was the backdrop for the story. The vivid descriptions of the landscape felt like home. I understood the people of Cutter Gap and their deep faith and mountain traditions. I took comfort in the language of the rich mountain dialect. Christy was my first real experience as a reader with what I now know as Appalachian or Southern lit, and it changed the trajectory of what I wanted to read.
Christy is one of the few books set in Appalachia that made it into mainstream media. Books published by the “big five” shy away from Appalachian and Southern lit. I was fortunate to grow up in Kentucky. Along with its basketball, horse racing, and bourbon, we have a rich literary tradition. After Christy, I started digging into James Still, Gurney Norman, Jesse Stuart, and Verna Mae Slone. My grandmother was an educator, and she had a bookshelf that I loved to pilfer through. I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on that came out of the mountains. I didn’t know it then, but something inside of me changed. Reading about other Appalachians, even though it was often from a different time, gave me a sense of pride and a deeper understanding of the place I was from. And to me, that’s what good literature does. It makes us empathic and broadens our worldview.
Now, I can introduce others to the myriad of voices that often go unheard or buried in the publishing world. When I decided to open an independent bookstore in Hazard, Kentucky, I knew what I wanted the primary focus to be. Bookstores in eastern Kentucky were few and far between when I was growing up. And the chance to meet and share spaces with writers was even more of a challenge. My dream for Read Spotted Newt was to create a space where readers and writers could come together and share their love of books. By providing a space, a literary community would form on its own organically. My passion for Appalachian literature is evident when you come into the bookstore. I wanted young readers to find books at Read Spotted Newt with characters they could see themselves in. Characters like I found in Christy. I wanted them to understand their lived experiences importance and connection to place.
The Read Spotted Newt bookshop in Hazard, Kentucky
The cornerstone to curating a collection that highlights all the themes important to me as a bookseller is independent presses, specifically university presses. My relationship with the University Press of Kentucky has many facets—one as a bookseller and one as a writer. On July 27th, 2022, I was offered a publishing contract from the press. I was on the campus of the Hindman Settlement School, attending the annual Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. It’s a magical week. I look for ways to replicate that space and time throughout the year. But it’s nearly impossible to recreate. Something about that week is sacred. The night of July 27th would be a turning point for eastern Kentucky. Historical flooding would ravage Hindman and the surrounding counties. Immediately, my attention was turned elsewhere, and the University Press of Kentucky staff offered nothing but support and compassion. Our conversations were no longer about contracts but about what I needed going forward. The time to use my energies to help my community recover and rebuild. My relationship with the press became one rooted in trust. I trusted that they would give my story room to unfold, and the bottom line was never of their concern. Appalachian stories are complex, and the story I wanted to tell is complex. Still, I knew from experience years of reading books published by the University Press of Kentucky that I need not worry about my words being manipulated for commercial success.
And that’s what a university press does. It gives a platform for complex, diverse stories—voices that are often overlooked by the larger market. Their commitment to amplifying rural and Appalachian voices was cemented with Fireside Industries, an imprint created in collaboration with the Hindman Settlement School. As a bookseller in eastern Kentucky, these are the stories that are important to my customers. Literature continues to come under attack in the current climate, so it’s important to me to provide books that push back against the powers that be.
Whether I’m in contact with someone at the University Press of Kentucky about my manuscript or arranging a book signing for other writers at Read Spotted Newt, I know that all parties involved are there for their love of language. Putting a book into the world takes time and great care if it’s done right. And the University Press of Kentucky is doing it right. I take comfort in knowing that independent presses are fighting the good fight so readers, young and old, see themselves in literature and understand their story is one important enough to tell.
Mandi Fugate Sheffel
Mandi Fugate Sheffel owns and operates Read Spotted Newt, a bookstore in Hazard, Kentucky. She was born and raised in Red Fox, Kentucky, and graduated from Eastern Kentucky University.
One of the ways in which the University Press of Kentucky exercises its unique ability to #SpeakUP is through our constant development of new series, each with a dedicated editor or editors. Establishing a new series and committing ourselves to its evolution gives the authors and works published within that series a valuable opportunity to receive attention that can uniquely appreciate that book’s highly specific needs and merits, based off of the content and/or thematic elements that run through the overall series.
Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., writer, activist, and author of the critically-acclaimed poetry collection Gay Poems for Red States, celebrates the University Press of Kentucky and its support of varied, diverse, and important voices. The Press strives to be champions for individuals with identities that remain underrepresented in the literary world, and that mission is more important than ever at such a critical moment for marginalized communities worldwide.
On this second day of #UPWeek2023, the University Press of Kentucky answers the question “Who does our press help #SpeakUP?” University presses’ mission is to give voice to the scholarship and ideas shaping conversations around the world, so it’s crucial that we uplift and amplify individuals and stories from communities that are too often lost in the mainstream.
In today’s guest post, Dr. Melissa Helton, literary arts director at Hindman Settlement School, writes about the devastation of the catastrophic flash flood of July 2022 that claimed the lives of more than 40 people in Central Appalachia. Appalachia is so rarely thought of as anything beyond “the holler”, let alone as a place with a beautiful and irreplaceable culture and people. Today’s writing from Dr. Helton shares in our mission to celebrate and give voice to that very same Appalachian community—its strength, determination, and resilience.
Meal time at Appalachian Writers’ Workshop 2023
Founded in 1902, the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky has been known as “the seedbed” for Appalachian literature. Here, you can see modern Appalachian writers like Frank X Walker, Neema Avashia, and Robert Gipe mentoring high school students during our week-long summer Ironwood Writers Studio, or Kari Gunter-Seymour, Lisa Kwong, and Jim Minick teaching online classes for The Makery. We can scroll back in time to the early years of the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop, where you can see Jim Wayne Miller, Albert Stewart, and Harriet Arnow gathering with their students over meals in the dining hall, or we could scroll further back still to the early years with James Still and Lucy Furman on campus, or even back to the very beginning when our founders May Stone and Katherine Pettit wrote journals of their first years here in the mountains as they detailed the people, culture, and natural landscape they encountered. All of these snapshots show that the claim of being a seedbed for Appalachian literature is well-earned. As the first rural settlement school in the country, to now a cultural and historical non-profit, Hindman Settlement School has been working to document, foster, and develop Appalachian voices and stories for over a century.
High school students attending Ironwood Writers Studio
Our tagline is that we celebrate heritage and strive to meet the changing needs of the region. Some of the ways we have done that is as our institution continues to add to the literary ecosystem, we look for ways we can address the unmet needs of our writers, readers, educators, students, and community neighbors. This has included online writing classes, the development of our inaugural Winter Burrow Literary & Arts Conference this December, and our forthcoming literary and arts journal Untelling. Also included is the Fireside Industries publishing imprint through the University Press of Kentucky, which was founded in 2018.
Fireside Industries is devoted to telling authentic rural stories and Appalachian stories from those who live in those places, and the imprint strives to bring more attention to Appalachian classics while also lifting up new, diverse voices. The series editor, current Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House, has said his goal as editor is to pay homage to the past and give much deserved attention to important Appalachian books, as well as keeping an eye on the future to bring in diverse writers with engaging and interesting perspectives. We can see that commitment to honor the past in the re-release of Lucy Furman’s The Quare Women and James Still’s Hounds on the Mountain. And we can see that commitment to bring in diverse voices and tell the untold stories in the celebrated release of Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle’s Even as We Breathe, a historical fiction about two Cherokee youth during World War 2; Patricia L. Hudson’s Traces, which tells the story of Daniel Boone through the lives of his wife Rebecca and their daughters; and The Girl Singer by Marianne Worthington, which is a poetry collection that celebrates the hidden women of early country music.
The Fireside Industries imprint publishes 2-3 books a year, showcasing a mix of genre and subject matter. Our forthcoming titles include Monic Ductan’s short story collection The Daughters of Muscadine, which centers Black women characters in Georgia (November 2023) and Jane Hicks’s poetry collection The Safety of Small Things which, among other things, explores the experience of battling and surviving breast cancer (January 2024). Due out September 2024 is the anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky, which I was the special guest editor for.
In July 2022, several counties throughout southeast Kentucky experienced devastating flash flooding, including Knott County and our Hindman Settlement School campus. Half of the total death toll from the storms and flooding were suffered here in Knott County, and our campus suffered damage to 5 of our buildings, including classrooms, offices, living spaces, and our archive. We were in the middle of the 45th Appalachian Writers’ Workshop with 60 attendees on campus.
Appalachian Writers’ Workshop class the day before the flood.
After the immediate rescue began to slow down and the community transitioned into the long-term rebuilding and recovering, I was asked to edit an anthology about the flood—this would become Troublesome Rising. The pieces include accounts of that terrible night in July and the aftermath, some document other floods throughout Appalachia, some are fictional floods, and some are metaphorical floods like diaspora, COVID, and addiction.
Many of the included writers were ones that physically went through the flood, and some experienced it from a distance. For some of these contributors, this is their first or second publishing credit, all the way up to prolific writers like Wendell Berry, George Ella Lyon, Nikki Giovanni, and Lee Smith.
Staff and volunteers work to rescue flooded books and materials from the archive (August 2022)
As a member of the Hindman writing community before becoming an employee, documenting what our writers went through was an honor. The collection also documents some of the surrounding community’s experience of this flood, the effects of climate change and extractive industries that exacerbate our natural disasters in the region, and the profound loss and strength of the people of Central Appalachia, all of which are much-needed conversations to be had within the region and beyond. As a book on the Fireside Industries imprint, we’re proud to gather these pieces and contribute them to these conversations.
Contact Dr. Melissa Helton, the writer of this guest post: melissa@hindman.org or (606) 785-5475.
For more than 80 years, the University Press of Kentucky has been publishing award-winning and critically-acclaimed books and highlighting diverse and knowledgeable voices from Kentucky and beyond. While the books published range in topic from film to military history, poetry to public health, Kentucky—its people, history, and culture—has been at the heart of everything we do. We speak up for the commonwealth, but also for readers and writers everywhere, because we understand that books have the power to educate, empower, enlighten, and entertain. And in a world where so much happens every day, we know that books can be a comfort and a tool for greater understanding.
We remain appreciative to be connected with university presses across the globe through the Association of University Presses, and are thrilled to participate in #UPWeek2023! This year’s theme, #SpeakUP, provides an opportunity for the Press and our supporters to give voice to the scholarship and ideas that shape conversations around the world.
Today we’re pleased to share praise from Frank X Walker, an artist, writer, educator, and the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He has published eleven collections of poetry, including Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Expanded Edition; When Winter Come: The Ascension of York; Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems; and Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award. The recipient of the thirty-fifth Lillian Smith Book Award and the Thomas D. Clark Award for Literary Excellence, he is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets. His new children’s book A Is for Affrilachia is a finalist in the 2023 Black Authors Matter Children’s Book Awards – Educational Category.
Check out all the amazing events coming up featuring our authors and the Press!
February 3-5, 2023, Williamsburg, VA Book Festival
Featured Speaker Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle:Even As We Breathe, University of Kentucky Press, examines race and class in the secluded microcosm of Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, during the summer of 1942. Clapsaddle tackles the complexities of race relations, familial identity, and citizenship for Cherokees and draws comparisons between rural Cherokees, rural whites (soldiers and civilians), and upper-class foreign diplomats.
For more information click HERE. To register for the event click HERE.
February 9, 2023, McCracken County Public Library 555 Washington Street, Paducah, Kentucky
Black History Month Event: African Americans in the Civil War led by historian Dr. Alicestyne Turley with support from Kentucky Humanities. This presentation will discuss the important role of Black Kentuckians in prosecuting the American Civil War. The actions taken by United States Colored Troops and, on their behalf, established new citizenship rights, norms and opportunities for all Americans.
Presentation 5:30-6:30 PM Go to mclib.net for more info
Frank X Walker Book Launch – 116 N 3rd St, Danville, KY 40422 Saturday, February 11 – 11am to 1pm
The Plaid Elephant is hosting a launch party for a brand-new children’s book by Frank X Walker. The first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, Frank X is an artist, writer, and educator – and a Danville native! More info here: Plaid Elephant Books
February 13-14, 2023, University of the Cumberlands WIlliamsburg, KY
Novelist Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is this year’s Palmer Lecturer. Click HERE for flyer.
The Gospel of Freedom: Black Evangelicals and the Underground Railroad by Dr. Alicestyne Turley. An evocative exploration of the Underground Railroad and the important contributions of white and black antislavery southerners who united to form organized networks of assisted slave escapes in Kentucky and the Deep South.
Check out all the amazing events coming up featuring our authors and the Press!
January
January 17, 2023, Virtual and In Person Author Event
Scott Gould presents The Hammerhead Chronicles conversation ith Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle:
Scott Gould is the author of the novels, The Hammerhead Chronicles and Whereabouts, a memoir, Things That Crash, Things That Fly, as well as the story collection, Strangers to Temptation. He is a multiple winner of the S.C. Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Prose and a recipient of the S.C. Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship. Other honors include a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books, an Independent Press Award, an IPPY Award for Southern Fiction and the Larry Brown Short Story Award. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, New Madrid Journal, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, BULL, Garden & Gun, New Stories from the South, and others. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, resides in Qualla, NC. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe (UPK 2020), was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, and received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award (2021). Clapsaddle’s work appears in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Our State Magazine, and The Atlantic. She teaches secondary English and Cherokee Studies, is an editor for the Appalachian Futures Series (UPK), and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.
January 22-29, 2023, Virtual Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Convention
TBRCon2023 is an all-virtual sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention, streaming live from Jan. 22-29, 2023. With 30 live panels, 25 author readings, 3 podcast recordings and 3 D&D sessions, the third edition of FanFiAddict’s Stabby Award-winning convention aims to offer viewers countless in-depth discussions on SF/F/H, writing craft, publishing, marketing and much more!
TBRCon2023 is absolutely FREE, available to stream live on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook during convention week (or to re-watch on YouTube at your convenience).
Wednesday, January 25, 2023, Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, Johnson, VT
Visiting Writer, Crystal Wilkinson, the national award-winning author of Perfect Black, will give a featured reading at Vermont Studio Center in the Red Mill Building on January 25, 2023 at 7:00 pm ET. This event is free and open to the public.
January 26, 2023, Virtual Event
Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords. This live, virtual event features two panel discussions: President Nixon’s Grand Strategyfor Vietnam and Seeking Peace in Vietnam, 1969-1973, as well as keynote remarks from Dr. Mark Moyar, William P. Harris Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College.
Resistance in the Bluegrass: Empowering the Commonwealth by Farrah Alexander. Kentucky is more than just bourbon, basketball, and BBQ. This book is a celebration of the engaged citizens who have made and continue to make a difference across the Commonwealth.
February 3-5, 2023, Williamsburg, VA Book Festival
Featured Speaker Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle:Even As We Breathe, University of Kentucky Press, examines race and class in the secluded microcosm of Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, during the summer of 1942. Clapsaddle tackles the complexities of race relations, familial identity, and citizenship for Cherokees and draws comparisons between rural Cherokees, rural whites (soldiers and civilians), and upper-class foreign diplomats.
For more information click HERE. To register for the event click HERE.
February 9, 2023, McCracken County Public Library 555 Washington Street, Paducah, Kentucky
Black History Month Event: African Americans in the Civil War led by historian Dr. Alicestyne Turley with support from Kentucky Humanities. This presentation will discuss the important role of Black Kentuckians in prosecuting the American Civil War. The actions taken by United States Colored Troops and, on their behalf, established new citizenship rights, norms and opportunities for all Americans.
Presentation 5:30-6:30 PM Go to mclib.net for more info
February 13-14, 2023, University of the Cumberlands WIlliamsburg, KY
Novelist Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is this year’s Palmer Lecturer.
The Gospel of Freedom: Black Evangelicals and the Underground Railroad by Dr. Alicestyne Turley. An evocative exploration of the Underground Railroad and the important contributions of white and black antislavery southerners who united to form organized networks of assisted slave escapes in Kentucky and the Deep South.
March 4, 2023, Union Ave Books, 517 Union Ave., Knoxville, TN 37902
Mr. Walker will be reading his book, A IS FOR AFFRILACHIA, at 12 pm, with a Meet & Greet following immediately until 3 pm. More info at Union Ave Books website.
March 8, 2023, Bookends in Florence.
Bookends is hosting the book launch and signing for Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s book, Drinking from Graveyard Wells.
March 10, 2023, NYMAS: The New York Military Affairs Symposium
Featuring Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Cryptology by Betsy Rohaly Smoot, intelligence historian and former NSA.
This a virtually hosted event at 7pm ET. Please click HERE for more information. Please click HERE for the zoom link.
March 16, 2023, McCracken County Public Library 555 Washington Street, Paducah, Kentucky
The Finest Place We Know: A Centennial History of Murray State University A talk led by authors Robert L. Jackson, president of Murray State University and Sean J. McLaughlin and special collections and exhibits director at Murray State University. Over the past century, this institution has indelibly shaped the lives of generations of talented young people, some of whom went on to enjoy remarkable careers at NASA, on the Kentucky Supreme Court, in Hollywood, and with the NBA.
5:00 PM Book Signing, Presentation 5:30-6:30 PM, Go to mclib.net for more info.
March 16-19, 2023, Appalachian Studies Conference, Ohio State University, Athens, Ohio.
For more information and registration links please click HERE.
House of Champions: The Story of Kentucky Basketball’s Home Courts by Kevin Cook. The first comprehensive history of the UK basketball program that focuses on the team’s various arenas—how and why they were built, and the contemporary political, social, and athletic forces which shaped them and which they in turn influenced—and tells the story of Wildcat basketball told through the lens of their home courts.
April 14, 2023, Oak Ridge Public Library, Oak Ridge
Emily Strasser’s Half-Life of a Secret Book Tour!
April 14-16, 2023, Blue Ridge Writers Conference
Breathing Life and Lives into Fictionwith Keynote Speaker Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Reading is an intellectual and emotional activity, one that necessitates a physical experience. Our bodies both trigger and are triggered by sensory memory. We may not remember a conversation with a loved one, but we remember the coldness of their touch, how heavy the words felt in our ears, or the smell of their skin. By employing our own bodies in the craft of writing to create new worlds, new experiences, and new energy, we empower our stories to invoke a corporeal experience. Clapsaddle will explore methods for infusing physical sensation into your writing through practice, observation, and structure.
War & Homecoming: Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation by Travis L. Martin. A timely, important, and engaging analysis of how society views the millions of veterans in this country, and how that perception has a profound impact on how veterans perceive themselves, their roles in society, and their relationships with others.
The Kentucky Poet Laureate, Crystal Wilkinson, will be the honored guest for West Liberty University’s Hughes Lecture on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Free and open to the public, the lecture gets started at 4 p.m. Wilkinson will be introduced by West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman.
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event.
April 29, 2023, Bluegrass Writers Conference at 9am, Frankfort, KY
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event.
May
May 2, 2023, Filson Historical Society Lecture at noon
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event.
May 8, 2023, Atlas Books, Johnson City, TN
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event. Atlas Books/Langston Centre event will be held at 4 pm at the Johnson City Public LibSecond reading/book signing will be held at the Tipton Gallery at 7 pm.
Wednesday, May 10, 2023 at 5:00pm, Alabama Booksmith. 2626 19th Place South, Homewood, AL 35209
While the excitement of the Kentucky Derby is still in the air, come meet the author who wrote the book on the Sport of Kings. Jennifer Kelly is one of the most knowledgeable writers on all things horse racing and will not only sign your books, but be happy to answer your questions.
The Assault on Elisha Green by Randlph Paul Runyon. In The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community, historian Randolph Paul Runyon recounts one man’s pursuit of justice over violence and racism in the nineteenth century. He tells the story of Green’s life and follows the network of relationships that led to the event of the assault. Tracing these three men’s lives brings the reader from the slavery era to the eve of the First World War, from Kentucky to New Mexico, from Covington to the Kentucky River Palisades, with particular focus on Mason and Bourbon Counties.
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event.
June 10, 2023, Union Ave Books
Sarah L. Hall is associate professor of agriculture and natural resources at Berea College. Her scholarly articles on the restoration of native forests and grasslands in Kentucky have been published in a wide range of journals, including Restoration Ecology and New Forests. Union Ave Books is excited to present an author event with Sarah Hall & her new title Sown in the Stars. This event will take place on June 10, 2023 @ 4 pm at Union Ave Books.
Sown in the Stars: Planting by the Signs by Sarah L. Hall. A timely and illuminating look at the custom of planting by the signs and its past, present, and future, as told from the perspectives of farmers in central and eastern Kentucky.
June 24, 2023, Morgernstern’s Books, Bloomington, IN at 2pm
A Is for Affrilachia by Frank X Walker book event.
June 24, 2023, Lexington Pride Festival
Read with Pride and Carnegie Center reading event with Willie Carver.
July
July 23-28, 2023, Appalachian Writers Workshop Hindman, KY
The Premier Literary Gathering of the Mountain South:
Make plans to join us for the 46th annual Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. This week-long residency welcomes published and unpublished writers alike, all learning alongside one another in a supportive environment guided by the region’s unique tradition.
The Workshop provides an opportunity to study craft in structured workshops, attend special topic sessions, and enjoy captivating readings by our award-winning faculty. This historic gathering is known for providing rigorous instruction in a family-like atmosphere, where writers of place come together at the banks of Troublesome to meet a year-round community. Beginning, emerging, and established writers are all encouraged to apply.
Bourbon is My Comfort Food by Heather Wibbels. The definitive primer on mixing elegantly crafted bourbon cocktails for those looking to imbibe on the spirit and history of one of the world’s most sought-after liquors.
Bourbon 101 by Albert W.A. Schmid. A distinctive and introductory approach to learning about all-things bourbon including its history, production, and enduring cultural identity.
Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage by Michael Veach. This book shines a light on bourbon’s pivotal place in our national heritage, presenting the most complete and wide-ranging history of bourbon available.
Katherine Jackson French: Kentucky’s Forgotten Ballad Collector by Elizabeth DiDavino. The life and legacy of a pivotal scholar and how her collection of traditional Kentucky ballads elevated the status of women, gave testimony to the complexity of balladry’s ethnic roots and influences, and revealed more complex local dialects.
September 20-24, 2023, Assn for the Study of African American Life & History
UPK plans to exhibit at this event!
October
October 9-11, 2023, Association of the US Army
UPK plans to exhibit at this event!
October 20-21, 2023, Kentucky Book Festival!
October 25-29, 2023, Tremont Writers Conference, TN
Featured Author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Small-group morning workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry take place outdoors and are led by faculty members Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle (fiction), Janet McCue (nonfiction), and Frank X Walker (poetry). Guest novelist Richard Powers, a MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer, will lead several sessions for the entire group, including a craft talk with conversation. Each afternoon we’ll join experienced Tremont naturalists for guided explorations that spark curiosity and wonder; through hands-on experience, we’ll learn about this region’s cultural and natural history. Evenings will conclude with hearty dinners, fellowship with your peers, and readings by writing faculty.
UPK’s Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices Book Series Uplifts Underrepresented Voices
Abby Freeland, Senior Acquisitions Editor
As someone born, raised, and educated in West Virginia, I’ve often had to reflect upon and try to understand myself—my identity—through and around the negative perceptions and discourse of others.
Why? Well, more often than not, the only time I heard anything about West Virginia and Appalachia outside of the comforts of my family and community—in national media, from politicians and pundits, on TV and in movies and books, and even from strangers expressing a disbelief that I am a product of my home state—it was teeming with negativity and condescension.
Because of this, I found it challenging to acknowledge and accept my identity as an Appalachian, even as an adult. I’d often deny it, at least subconsciously. As a teenager, I remember repeatedly thinking I could not possibly be from West Virginia. It didn’t make sense. What I saw or read about myself outside my small-town life did not align with my experiences or upbringing. In fact, it was mainly in conflict with it. And for the most part, that continues today.
Of course, West Virginia and Appalachia have systemic and inexcusable problems, often racist, sexist, classist, and all of the above. I do not deny that. I do not align with or support many laws, policies, or the supposed mainstream values of many people, politicians, organizations, and religions. And to be clear, I recognize my white privilege in all I write here. But I can say that my experiences growing up and living in Appalachia were very different from what I saw on TV or heard on the nightly news. I also know that’s not the case for everyone.
On the flip side, after 15+ years of working in book publishing (and as an evolving human being), I’ve realized that I do hold quite a bit of power and privilege as a university press professional despite my background—even though it doesn’t always feel that way, especially during those first several years of a career. And even if I’m just an Appalachian.
Now that I understand this privilege, I plan to intentionally use my role as a university press editor to challenge the stereotypes that harm the place that I call home and break down the status quo that may or may not directly affect me: the prejudice, bias, and preconceived notions, the ignorance, and the laws and policies that harm the underserved and underrepresented people in my community, near and far.
Last year, when I returned to UP publishing after a brief hiatus from the field to work as a senior acquisitions editor at the University Press of Kentucky, I knew I wanted to do as much as possible to fight stereotypes, inequality, and injustice in the Appalachian region and beyond. With the rights of so many people and women under continued and renewed attacks across the globe, I felt and still feel obligated to do this, especially where I hold some of the most power in my life: my job as an editor.
Under the leadership of Ashley Runyon, the University Press of Kentucky’s newest director, the advancement of UPK’s mission to provide an accessible platform for diverse Appalachian voices and stories, is now more imperative and important than ever. At the 2022 Appalachian Studies Association Conference, UPK launched Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices, a book series dedicated to giving voice to Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, Queer, and other nonwhite or ignored identities within the region. At its core, App Futures creates a dedicated space for the voices and stories of Appalachia’s future and past; it does not seek to define Appalachia. Reading from rather than about Appalachia, it observes the process of becoming by amplifying the experiences that writers, activists, organizers, and everyday people find within its boundaries and in their absence from this place.
As the editor acquiring books under this series, I’m honored and grateful to work with established and emerging writers and scholars to uplift the overlooked, dismissed, and intentionally suppressed stories of those who have always been in Appalachia, despite what we’ve been told and shown to believe and accept.
This series came to fruition because of collaboration and teamwork: conversations with Ashley Runyon and the entire UPK staff; hours of brainstorming with Davis Shoulders, a cofounder of Atlas Books and now a series editor; many more hours of work with writers Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Crystal Wilkinson, both now series editors; and an entire series advisory board. We know we’ll make mistakes along the way, but our intention is to openly recognize them and evolve for the better along the way.
After months of planning, collaboration, writing, and revising, we’re eagerly awaiting the publication of the first book in the App Futures series: Tar Hollow Trans by Stacy Jane Grover dissects and rejects what it means to be trans and Appalachian will publish next spring. Soon after, we’ll publish books that challenge mainstream ideas about Appalachia: a comprehensive Black History of Appalachia, coedited by Enkeshi El-Amin and Jessica Wilkerson, a visual history of Queer Appalachians edited by Julie Rae Powers, collections and memoirs by Trans and Queer Appalachians, and monographs, photography books, and anthologies that elevate the voices and experiences of Black, Queer Latinx, and Native Appalachians from writers.
As an acquisitions editor and an Appalachian, I feel honored to be a small part of uplifting the often-dismissed Appalachians by publishing their stories—which, in turn, will cement their existence into our collective history. And somehow, luckily, I’ve been able to align my experiences as an Appalachian with my work’s purpose.
I encourage our entire association—whether you’re just gaining power through a new role, you already have it, or you don’t think you ever will—to do all you can to uplift and make accessible underrepresented voices in your area of expertise. That’s how we, book editors and book publishers, can change the world.
I’ve always been told that its difficult if not impossible to publish a short story collection these days. My stories are populated by Black people, are set between Zimbabwe and the USA, and center the lives of Black women. My debut Drinking from Graveyard Wells is a genre-bending collection that blurs the lines between magical realism, social horror, AfroSurrealism, and fantasy. The stories contain elements of the surreal to address the very real horrors and absurdities of patriarchy and capitalism on Black women.
Being a debut author from Zimbabwe, I thought my chances of landing a publisher for these weird, unapologetically African stories was a pipe dream. Then I stumbled across the University Press of Kentucky’s New Poetry and Prose Series whose mission is to seek out contemporary fiction and poetry that “exhibit a profound attention to language, strong imagination, formal inventiveness, and awareness of one’s literary roots.”
The Press is at the forefront of discovering fresh voices from the margins such as Rion Amilcar Scott’s Insurrections. I submitted to the 2021 New Poetry and Prose Series immediately, a straightforward process through their website that involved a cover letter and filling out a Google form. That is the beauty of university presses. They are less driven by conventional notions of marketability, notions that often privilege white authors and western forms of storytelling. University Presses seek out titles that may be too experimental or niche for other publishers and that appeal to both academic and trade markets. With the University Press of Kentucky, I found a publisher that was excited to champion African story forms.
Throughout the process, I’ve worked with a small but hands-on team that was enthusiastic about my ideas during the editorial process and constantly asked questions and listened to get it right. One of the things that was important to me was to have an African cover artist and the team worked to ensure Ivorian surrealist painter Obou Gbais’ artwork graced the cover. Working with UPK has been a collaborative partnership. It is no surprise that university presses have shepherded groundbreaking work by Black writers like Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press) and Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib (University of Texas Press). University Presses are one’s to watch out for.
The University Press of Kentucky 