Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
Session Abstract or Summary
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia: We sustain our culture by writing about it, even if we are temporarily or permanently distant from the land that first nurtured us and has held us fast ever since. Now over a span of memory and distance, where do the words take us? And why? When we step out of our sense of place how do we preserve and honor our roots and keep them vibrant, especially when our lives have taken us on unexpected journeys outside our region? Thomas Wolfe stated only half the truth when he chose the title of his novel, You Can't Go Home Again. Perhaps we can’t recapture those people and places we have lost, but we can ride our memory and imagination to rediscover the love of the folksand the mountains that are embedded deep inside us. We are blessed by our sense of place and its embrace of us. We see our homes and loved ones through special eyes that reveal more than just images. We are now experienced enough to appreciate how our beginnings first put their print on us. Our culture later encouraged us to grow and helped us along the way to make the most of life. We are in step with our inner selves. These writers from the WVWC MFA community will use their creative work to share how the region has shaped their lives and given them the bedrock to know what is real and continues to remain alive. Their Appalachia, their sense of place, will never abandon them.
Presentation #1 Title
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
He will present creative nonfiction.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
David B. Evans is a nonfiction writer who lives in the mountains of eastern West Virginia not far from the Shenandoah Valley. As a boy he often visited the Appalachian part of southern Ohio east of Cincinnati and absorbed the stories his family told of growing up in the hill country. He is a recent graduate of the West Virginia Wesleyan College MFA program in creative writing. Evans is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize whose essays have appeared in Still: The Journal and in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers Wiley Cash Volume X.
Presentation #2 Title
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
She will present Creative Writing.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Jessica Spruill Waggoner is a graduate of the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. She is a poetry editor for HeartWood, a literary magazine in association with the MFA at WVWC. Jessica is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Burnt Pine Magazine, The Pikeville Review, Still: The Journal, and The Travelin’ Appalachians Revue, and is forthcoming in the anthology Feminine Rising: Voices of Power & Invisibility (Cynren Press, 2019). She is the founder and curator of Wordstock Wednesday, a literary reading series which hosts Appalachian writers and poets.
Presentation #3 Title
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
He will present Creative Writing.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Eric Waggoner’s academic work on American literature has appeared in several book collections and critical journals including Hemingway Review and Appalachian Journal. His creative nonfiction has appeared in literary journals including Still: The Journal, Kestrel, and The Pikeville Review. He is Contributing Editor and Writer for MAGNET magazine, and Founding Editor and Publisher of Latham House Press, a micro-press committed to releasing first chapbooks from promising Appalachian writers. He is Executive Director of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
Presentation #4 Title
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
She will present Creative Writing.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Ginny Rachel is a graduate from WV Wesleyan’s MFA program where she focused on fiction and returned to study nonfiction. In 2014 she began teaching English at various colleges in the Appalachian mountains of southern WV. She was awarded the Irene McKinney Fellowship for 2017-18 at WV Wesleyan College. Currently she teaches at Arkansas State University. Ginny’s work has appeared in WV South, and is forthcoming in Waves: A Confluence of Women’s Voices.
The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia
He will present creative nonfiction.
