kentucky writers

In part I of this two-part interview series from August 2023, Silas House joins me on the campus of UVa.'s College at Wise to talk about accent, making art about the complexity of Appalachia, and (ironically, since we're sitting by a pond) how mountain people seem drawn to water.

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels — “Clay's Quilt” (2001), “A Parchment of Leaves” (2003), “The Coal Tattoo” (2005), “Eli the Good” (2009), and “Same Sun Here” (2012, with Neela Vaswani) — including his most recent, “Lark Ascending,” which was a Booklist Editors' Choice and is the winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize. Four of his plays have been produced. He is also the author of the 2009 book of creative nonfiction “Something's Rising” (with co-author Jason Kyle Howard). In 2022 he was the recipient of the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBTQ writer in the nation. The same year he was named Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll. In 2021 House was given the Artist Award as part of the Governor's Awards in the Arts.

His writing has appeared recently in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Garden & Gun, The New York Times, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tri-Quarterly and many more of the country's leading publications. House is a former commentator for NPR's “All Things Considered” and is the executive producer and one of the subjects of the documentary “Hillbilly,” winner of the LA Film Festival's Documentary Prize and the Foreign Press Association's Media Award; the film ran on Hulu, where it was seen by millions of viewers, and is now available to stream on all platforms. His 2018 novel Southernmost is currently in pre-production as a feature film.

As a music journalist, House has worked with Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Lucinda Williams, Tyler Childers, S.G. Goodman, Lee Ann Womack, Kris Kristofferson, and many other musicians. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the recipient of three honorary degrees, and has been given such honors as an E.B. White Award, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Lee Smith Award, the Caritas Medal, the Hobson Medal and many others. In 2015 he was invited to read at the Library of Congress.

House teaches at Berea College, where he is the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair, and at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Creative Writing. This year he is serving as one of five judges of the National Book Award in Fiction. A native of eastern Kentucky, he now lives in Lexington.-(Bio from Kentucky Arts Council)

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Acoustic music: "Steam Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

A forbidden love affair, a suggestion of magical realism, a collective of village women lifting themselves out of poverty, and a family of Bengal tigers struggling to survive; Katy Yocom's debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear transports readers to India, where they are surrounded by the sights, the smells, the sounds, and amazing people. A lot has been written about the India of cities and slums. Yocom writes about rural India, where villagers compete with endangered tigers for food and water. Yocom stopped by Scribbler's Corner at River of Grass during the Jacksonville leg of her book tour, to talk about the growing market for environmental fiction, and how her novel was inspired by a litter of cubs at the Louisville Zoo. Katy Yocom's books are available at https://www.amazon.com/Three-Ways-Disappear-Katy-Yocom/dp/1618220837