Participation Type
Performance
Session Title
Session 8.19 Literature
Session Abstract or Summary
As a group of native Appalachian writers who have been variously displaced from the region—some returned, some still long gone, and yet all of us (be)longing—this group of women writers will discuss the ways in which we write to, from, and around the Appalachian region. Does being “from off” sharpen clarity in our work about the mountains--or romanticize it with that sense of “long ago and far away?” Does absence from the region impact the “authenticity” that haunts so much work about Appalachia? We will read our own poetry and prose, listening for the chiming paradoxes of longing, exile, intimacy, and authenticity in our voices.
Presentation #1 Title
Sound(ing) Ground: Writers on Exile and Authenticity
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Each member of our panel will read original creative work and will susequently offer perspectives on our topic--"exile" from Appalachia and our search for authenticity in our work as writers about the region. Time for audience questions will follow.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Karen Salyer McElmurray’s works are a memoir, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey and the novels, Motel of the Stars and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven. She was the 2014 Louis Rubin Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University and shee teaches in the Low-Residency Programs at West Virginia Wesleyan College and Rollins College.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Catherine V. Moore is a writer and multimedia producer from Fayette County, West Virginia, and She is a 2014 Appalachian Transition Fellow with the Highlander Center. Her essays, poems, and radio documentaries have appeared in Oxford American, Fence, Verse, and on public radio programs across the country.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Lisa Parker is a poet, musician, and photographer. Her first book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 ASA Weatherford Award for Poetry. She lives and works outside Washington, DC where she is working on her second bookand other creative projects.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Ida Stewart is the author of Gloss, winner of the Perugia Press Prize for a first or second book of poems by a woman. She co-edits the journal Unsplendid and and teaches writing as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delaware.
Sound(ing) Ground: Writers on Exile and Authenticity
Each member of our panel will read original creative work and will susequently offer perspectives on our topic--"exile" from Appalachia and our search for authenticity in our work as writers about the region. Time for audience questions will follow.
