Transforming Lives: The Access Program
by Jane Harris Woodside

Ohio is exporting an inexpensive yet effective program designed to convince Appalachian high school students that they just might be college material, after all.

Creating It Yourself: Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute
by Liz McGeachy

Eastern Kentucky teenagers think about their communities in new ways after Appalshop instructs them in the techniques and art of documentary production.

Abandoned anthracite mines in Pennsylvania’s coalfields attract a group of young adventurers.

Read an excerpt.

Through vivid illustrations and words, a Kentucky native brings Appalachian tales to a whole new audience of youngsters.

A retired West Virginia professor fondly remembers how his students’ dry wit and talent for irony helped them cope with whatever life tossed at them.

Read an excerpt.

A writer now living in Knoxville, Tennessee, thinks back to his Lebanese childhood and the peculiar efforts of an overzealous priest to save his soul.

Read an excerpt.

A Virginia native finds she can’t live without the red clay earth that had bled and nurtured her grandparents.

“Last Tuesday you lay back against the hill, the grass just barely beginning to green in the far-between places where it can grow. You listened to Diane, her black hair glowing in the noontime sun. You watched Shirley’s gray eyes, her thin-lipped smile. You listened to Janet tell her brothers’ dirty jokes, and you wondered who on earth you are. The hills were good for those two days. Yesterday, though, some of the seventh-grade boys set the hills on fire …”

“After two weeks at The Settlement, Mother pretty much wears the period-correct wardrobe all the time. I think she takes it off only to hand-wash it in a big tub she found in the garage. I don’t know what she wears while washing the dress and bonnet, and I don’t want to know. ‘Land’s sakes, young’un’ is how she responds to most of the things I say to her. It was funny at first …”

“All the dresses were supposed to be cream-colored, ivory, or white. Shoes could be bleached to match, and girls might adorn them with sprays of parsley or celery. Onions were absolutely out of the question, as they would clash with girlish perfumes …”

Raising the Nap by Jane Hicks

Only Child by Linda Brown

Lessons by S.d. Collins

Remembering by Julie Dunlop

A Start of Snow by Corinna Byer

A Reporter From New York Asks Edith Mae Chapman, Age Nine, What Her Daddy Tells Her About the Strike by Diane Gilliam Fisher

Under Ground, 1958 by Ron Houchin

The UN Commission on Refugees: A Report by Penelope Scambly Schott

The Balcony by G.C. Waldrep

The Circumstance of Death by Barbara Smith, reviewed by Genie Jacobson

Rooster Creek Girl Runs Away by Shawna Lee Hopkins, reviewed by John Sparks

The Last Girls by Lee Smith, reviewed by Kathy Griffith Fish

Gina.Jamie.Father.Bear by George Ella Lyon, reviewed by Roberta Herrin

Hollow Ground by Stephen Marion, reviewed by Gina Herring

The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life and Legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns by Elder John Sparks, reviewed by Mark Bay

In Brief by Marianne Worthington

Photo and illustration credits (from the top): Jayn’e Chappel, courtesy of Appalshop, Christine Goldbeck, Judith Victoria Hensley, courtesy of Danny Fulks, A.K., courtesy of Deborah Huso, Lauren Faulkenberry, Nancy Jane Earnest, Nancy Fischman, Nancy Fischman, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

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