Published in 2013 (first published 1998)
314 pages
Joyce Dyer is director of the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, and John S. Kenyon Professor of English. Dyer is the author of three books, The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings, In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer’s Journey, and Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town, and the editor of Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers. She has published essays in magazines such as North American Review, cream city review, and High Plains Literary Review. Dyer has won numerous awards for her writing, including the 1998 Appalachian Book of the Year Award and the 2009 David B. Saunders Award in Creative Nonfiction.
What is this book about?
“A broad sampling of deeply impressive writings—essays, memoirs, poetry, letters, stories—by women from the Southern Highlands.” —Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the 1997 Appalachian Studies Award
Appalachian Writers Association 1999 Book of the Year
Winner of the Susan Koppleman Award of the Popular Culture Association for Best Edited Collection in Women’s Studies
Thirty-five women writers from Appalachia define the region in a larger, more generous, and more intricate way that it has been defined before, dispelling many demeaning stereotypes of the region. The writers tell their compelling stories with poignancy, eloquence, forthrightness, and humor. A new American literary renaissance is ablaze in the Southern Highlands—the very place so often depicted by outsiders as dimly lit. 35 photos.
“Dyer succeeds admirably in a dual purpose: to promote a vital and virtually unknown body of work, and to suggest an Appalachian spirit that transcends state borders and artistic genres.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
