Mode of Program Participation
Community Organizing and Educational Programming
Participation Type
Roundtable
Session Title
Bringing it All Back Home
Session Abstract or Summary
“Whether I go or stay, the pain will be the same,” says Irene McKinney in her poem, “Homage to Hazel Dickens.” This roundtable of four Appalachian women writers--some of us the first women from our families to go on to college--will talk about having left Appalachia to enter the world of higher learning. We have moved from our home places and returned there to work, have lived “away” but still find our deepest connections in the region, or we have relocated to the mountains, finding there a more profound connection to ourselves. What are the often extreme costs, benefits, successes and frustrations of leaving home for an education? What are the unique challenges of being from a working class background and making a professional home in academia? Most importantly, what has a college education meant for us in terms of our families and our work as women artists with an impassioned commitment to Appalachia?
Presentation #1 Title
Bringing it All Back Home
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
The convener will introduce the panelists and their work and, at the end of the session, will be introduced by the other three panelists. She will present her own work on class, education, and hidden populations in academia and will then field questions from the audience.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Karen Salyer McElmurray’s memoir, Surrendered Child, won an AWP award for Creative Nonfiction. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, a Chaffin Award Winner for Appalachian Writing. Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, a collection of essays co-edited with Adrian Blevins, was published in 2015 with Ohio University Press. “Elixir” was a Notable in Best American Essays 2016. She is Nonfiction Editor for STILL.
Presentation #2 Title
Danielle Kelly will read from new work in fiction and nonfiction related to our subject
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
Danielle's work will relate to having studied "away" from the region, then her choice to return to WV, where she entered a Low Residency Program in fiction writing and began work on a novel. She makes her home in WV, where she teaches, writes, and is fiction editor for the magazine Heartwood.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Danielle Kelly holds an MFA in Fiction from West Virginia Wesleyan College and serves as Managing Editor and Co-Fiction Editor of HeartWood literary journal. She is a banker, a multi-denominational church singer, and currently serves as Adjunct Instructor of English at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. Danielle’s work has recently appeared in r.kv.r.y quarterly.
Presentation #3 Title
Mary Imo Stike will read from new work in poetry and nonfiction related to our subject
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Mary Imo Stike's work will be about her choice to make WV her spiritual and artistic home after having moved here from "away," and how that choice is an important one for her work as an artist , an artist-educator., and a feminist. She will particularly focus on her experiences as Native American and "working class" and how that has informed and continues to inform her poems and her community activism.
Presentation #4 Title
Jessie Van Eerden will read from new work in nonfiction related to our subject
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
Jessie Van Eerden's work will be about having lived in the Northeast and in DC--and having worked both in community service and in arts education. Her work these days is as Director of an important Low Residency Program in Creative Writing in WV in the heart of Appalachia. As an arts program director in the region, she helps guide voices and transform the lives of emerging regional artists.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Jessie van Eerden is author of two novels, Glorybound, winner of the 2012 ForeWord Reviews Editor’s Choice Fiction Prize, and My Radio Radio. Her collection of portrait essays, The Long Weeping, is forthcoming in 2017 or 2018. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, and other publications. Jessie holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and directs the low-residency MFA program at WV Wesleyan.
Bringing it All Back Home
The convener will introduce the panelists and their work and, at the end of the session, will be introduced by the other three panelists. She will present her own work on class, education, and hidden populations in academia and will then field questions from the audience.
