On (not?) being an Appalachian writer

I’ve not done a paid subscriber post in a while, partly because there has been too much else to write and also because I have nearly 30 times more free subscribers than paid, so feel they deserve the bulk of my energy and time. Still, I promised paid subscribers book updates, which they will find in the last part of this post. The rest, though, is for everyone.

As I said last week, I did not post two weeks ago because I had driven, boot and all, to participate in the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia (WANA) conference. It was their first conference since before the pandemic, and my first one ever. Although they had been on my radar for a while, for years I would never have dreamed of applying to read. When their CFP for 2025 came out, however, I threw my hat in the ring. To my delight…and surprise…they accepted.

Those who don’t write might wonder why I was surprised. Those who do will not wonder as much. Writing for publication means hearing “no” a lot, and recently I’d heard it a few times, mostly from Appalachian publications. In every case, I was up against dozens, if not hundreds of other submissions, but still, I dared to hope I might get at least one yes.

Later I would realize, much to my embarrassment, that one of my submissions contained numerous errors, the product of staying up too late and tweaking one time too many before hitting “send.” I deserved that one. Then I ended up substantially rewriting one of the other submissions, which I had originally written for the book.

Still, the earlier version was not all that bad, and it was definitely Appalachian. Yet I didn’t even get a “good” rejection,1 just a flat-out no, which is how I found myself wondering, again, whether I am an Appalachian writer.2

If one looks at the facts, the answer is a pretty obviously yes. I write from my home in southeastern Kentucky, and I am descended from people who came to northern Appalachia at the end of the Revolutionary War. Also, to be fair, Appalachian publications have picked up my writing a number times. It’s like that one bad student evaluation in sea of perfect 5s—instead of basking in the light, I wallow in the murk instead.

Why, you might ask, does it matter? I get to write; I have a book in progress. Who cares what label my work does or does not wear?

Who cares what label my work does or does not wear?

To a large extent, I agree. I actually don’t see my book as being “only” Appalachian3 or only anything, any more than I see Ruth’s writing as being just one thing. Like my grandmother, I write about real people doing real things in real places in real time. Our stories are more rural than urban, more history with a small h than History writ large, even if national and world events cannot always be ignored. I suppose you could call what we do Appalachian… and you could also call it any number of other things.

Still, there is something that makes Appalachian writers special: the community. The literary world is often depicted as a zero-sum game, a cutthroat world dominated by the illogic of scarcity. The writers I know are nothing like that. We believe in showing up, lending a hand, and making things, books among them. It is no coincidence, I think, that Ruth believed in these things too.

All of which explains why it was so special to share her work…our work…with the WANA crowd. Although Northern Appalachia spans five states and New York’s Southern Tier was, as usual, underrepresented,4 I often only had to say the name of a county or a town for my interlocutor’s face to show signs of recognition. Better still, not once did I have to explain that my New York had nothing to do with (in)famous Big Apple. During my reading and in conversations, I felt heard and seen. Community indeed.

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There is nothing like a deadline to keep a writer on task, and I am no exception. I am supposed to have a complete manuscript by the end of this year, and right now, I am on track to do that.