Contact Us

Dr. Jesse Graves

Director

gravesj@etsu.edu

Jesse Graves grew up in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, where his ancestors settled in the 1780s. He is the author of four poetry collections, including Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, Basin Ghosts, Specter Mountain (co-authored with William Wright), and Merciful Days, and a collection of essays, Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place. His work received the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Philip H. Freund Prize for Creative Writing from Cornell University, as well as two Weatherford Awards from Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association. Graves served as co-editor for several collections of poetry and scholarship, including four volumes of The Southern Poetry Anthology and The Complete Poems of James Agee. He teaches at East Tennessee State University, where he is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English.

Lacy Snapp

Associate Director

snapplc@etsu.edu 

Lacy Snapp is a poet, professor, and woodworking artist in East Tennessee where they plan university and community-based literary events. They serve as the Assistant Director of the Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative at ETSU, Poetry Co-Editor of Appalachian Places, and board member of the Johnson City Poets Collective. They hold a MA in English from ETSU (2019) and an MFA in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction from VCFA (2023). They were awarded the 2025 inaugural Tammy “Tambone” Clemons Visionary Award from the Appalachian Studies Association for their dedication to storytelling and activism that uplifts Appalachian voices. Their first chapbook which connected qualities of trees to familial memories, Shadows on Wood, was published in 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Their work (poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and book reviews) appears in About Place Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Appalachian Journal, Still: The Journal, Salvation South, Tupelo Quarterly, Hunger Mountain Review, Cutthroat, and multiple Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak anthologies, among others. 

Dr. Harley Mercadal

Assistant Director

mercadalh@etsu.edu

Harley Mercadal is an Appalachian writer, researcher, and professor from East Tennessee. She is a first-generation college graduate who earned her Doctorate of Philosophy from Middle Tennessee State University in 2026. Her dissertation explores Gothic Modernism in the work of 20th Century American women writers such as Edith Wharton, Carson McCullers, and Djuna Barnes. Her other research interests include Southern and Appalachian Gothic literature, haunting, liminality, and Queer literature. Her work, both critical and creative, appears in Scientia et Humanitas, Collage: A Journal of Creative Expression, The Mockingbird, The Mildred Haun Review, Off-Center, and others. 

Nate Darden

Media Coordinator

Nate Darden is a second-year English graduate student at ETSU. His areas of study include Appalachian poetry, queer theory, and Gothicism. Born and raised in North Carolina, he has always had one foot in the city, and one in the Appalachian mountains. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine, YNST, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Mockingbird, The Crawfish, and Appalachian Journal.

Anna Jackson

Graduate Assistant 

Anna Jackson is a current English graduate student at ETSU. She graduated from ETSU in 2025 with her B.A. in English and minors in Psychology and Changemaking. She is particularly interested in literature on the environment and classical studies. She is excited to be working with the Bert C. Bach this year and looks forward to focusing on more creative endeavors in the future.

Emerson Foriest

Graduate Assistant

Emerson Foriest is a graduate student pursuing an English M.A. at E.T.S.U.. As an undergrad, Emerson graduated with a B.A. in English and minor in Classical and Medieval Studies. Among her most notable accomplishments is her status as both a Gilman scholar/alumna and Fulbright semi-finalist. As of late, Emerson occupies her time with the study of regional poetry, work on an autobiographical collection of poetry, and more extensive interpersonal correspondence through letter writing.