Appalachian Literature

1985 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Anne Shelby
Keyword(s):  
Appalachian Literature

Twenty-First-Century Appalachian Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 487-488
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
The Core ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Twenty First Century

Although Appalachia and its authors resist political definition and economic category, one can say that twenty-first century Appalachian writers attempt to define what changes and what endures in a rapidly globalizing world. As Pulitzer Prize finalist Maurice Manning has noted, at the core of Appalachian literature is a tension between an appreciation of the region and an “anxiety for legitimacy”; this observation reflects the challenges facing authors from a region still often seen as “other” by the broader American culture. Some contemporary Appalachian authors explore which traditions are worth preserving and which ones should fall by the wayside, while others consider how to preserve and expand their Appalachian identity, a process that they sometimes connect with preservation and innovation in literary style. In short, many twentieth-century Appalachian authors cultivate in their readers an appreciation of Appalachian perspectives from a self-aware otherness that is sometimes tradition tethered yet is willing to go far beyond received notions about the region.

Breece D’J Pancake

2020 ◽  
pp. 391-395
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
English Education ◽  
University Of Virginia ◽  
Student Body ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
Marshall University ◽  
Mountain Man ◽  
The University ◽  
Hunting And Fishing

Although Breece D’J Pancake published only a handful of short stories during his brief life, their mastery has secured him a high ranking in Appalachian literature. Born and reared in Milton, West Virginia, Pancake completed his BA degree in English education at Marshall University in 1974. He taught at two military high schools, Fort Union and Staunton, before studying creative writing at the University of Virginia. Pancake felt culturally at odds with the university’s traditionally elite student body, and while there, he cultivated a “mountain man” persona. (In truth, Pancake did enjoy hunting and fishing throughout his life.) Pancake’s unusual middle name was the result of a printer’s error at the ...

James Still

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-247
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Eastern Kentucky ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
Rural Places ◽  
Almost All

Many people are surprised to learn that James Still was not a native of eastern Kentucky but of central Alabama, for his name has become synonymous with Appalachian literature. Many of his short stories and poems as well as his novel River of Earth (1940) are set in Knott County, Kentucky, where he worked at the Hindman School and lived for almost all of his adult life. Still’s work delves deeply into the lives of people and communities in one corner of Appalachia but simultaneously speaks to experiences in rural places and small towns everywhere. His writing also explores nature and the individual’s relationship to it....

Early Appalachian Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
William Bartram ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Late Eighteenth

The texts collected here describe late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Appalachia as a geographical and political frontier and include Cherokee narratives, works by pioneers and frontiersmen and Native Americans who assimilated into European culture, revealing how this borderland became a cultural, rhetorical, and mythical frontier. The selections also include Enlightenment, Euro-American views of Appalachia from men such as Thomas Jefferson and William Bartram.

Loyal Jones

2020 ◽  
pp. 439-442
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Great Smoky Mountains ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
Berea College ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Smoky Mountains ◽  
Jim Wayne Miller ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

Loyal Jones was born near the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee County, North Carolina, and was reared there and in nearby Clay County. After earning degrees from Berea College (1954) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1961), he spent five years directing the Council of the Southern Mountains, a community development organization. From 1970 to 1993 he directed Berea’s Appalachian Center, which is named in his honor. Jones helped shape Appalachian literature in the 1960s by advocating for the publication of Appalachian authors such as Gurney Norman and Jim Wayne Miller in the council’s periodical ...

Fred Chappell

2020 ◽  
pp. 305-308
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
Appalachian Literature ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
Duke University ◽  
The University ◽  
Reynolds Price ◽  
Fiction Writer

Poet, fiction writer, essayist, and educator Fred Chappell was reared on his grandparents’ farm in Canton, North Carolina. He began writing poems when he was fifteen. While attending Duke University (receiving his AB in 1961 and his MA in 1964), he became friends with southern writers Reynolds Price, Anne Tyler, and James Applewhite. Chappell taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1964 until 2004 and was poet laureate of North Carolina from 1997 until 2002. Although claimed by the southern literary canon, Chappell considers himself an Appalachian author, believing that Appalachian literature is distinct from its southern cousin....

Then-what Days

James Still ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Boggess
Keyword(s):  
War On Poverty ◽  
Appalachian Studies ◽  
Appalachian Literature

This chapter recounts Still’s transition from teaching at Morehead to living in Knott County where problems and change were increasingly evident. President Johnson’s War on Poverty put a national focus on the region’s economy and environment. Still continued to develop his public personality during the 1970s and built connections with people like Cratis Williams, Robert Higgs, Harry Caudill, Bill Weinberg, and Mike Mullins. He was inadvertently becoming part of the emerging Appalachian Studies movement that would lead eventually to the title unofficially bestowed on him: Dean of Appalachian Literature.

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