The Bristol Public Library together with Washington County Virginia Public Library System and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for The Big Read. The theme is “Where We Live,” and the book selected is Burning Bright by Ron Rash. Free copies of the book will be available at all three locations while supplies last. A wide array of programs will be available, including book discussions, author talks, creative writing workshops, and more. Click here for more information.
Ron Rash is known
for both his novels and his short stories which portray life in the Appalachian
region. A professor and a poet, Rash’s
stories can be gritty and beautiful at the same time. His stories are set in various time periods
but all are memorable. Burning Bright
is a superb collection of his stories; novels include The Cove and Serena.
Other Appalachian authors include:
Lee Smith was born
in Grundy, VA and began writing stories in elementary school. She is the author
of many acclaimed novels and short story collections, including Family Linen,
Black Mountain Breakdown, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Devil’s
Dream.
Silas House was working as a rural mail carrier just before he sold his first novel, Clay’s Quilt. Clay Sizemore is a young miner who is falling in love with Alma, a talented fiddler trying to escape an abusive husband. Other titles include A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo.
Sharyn
McCrumb is best known for her Ballad
novels set in Appalachia. Many draw on regional history and legends as part of
the story. Titles include She Walks
These Hills, Unquiet Grave, The Ballad of Tom Dooley, and The
Devil Amongst the Lawyers.
Julia
Keller was a journalist before turning her attention to
fiction. Her Bell Elkins series follows a prosecutor in the rural West Virginia
town of Acker’s Gap. In A Killing in
the Hills, the first book in the series, three men are gunned down in a
local dinner in broad daylight. To make matters worse, one of the witnesses was
Bell’s own teenage daughter. Keller shows both the beauty and the troubles of
the area, and the harm addiction brings.
Wiley
Cash writes about his native North Carolina in his gothic,
character-driven novels. Like Rash, Cash
doesn’t hesitate to show the darker side of human nature but love can be a
powerful countermeasure. His first novel
was A Land More Kind Than Home.
Ann
Pancake grew up in West Virginia and her writing tends to be set in
the Appalachian region. Her work
includes novel, short stories, and essays.
Strange as This Weather Has Been is a contemporary novel about a
family dealing with the rise and fall of the mining industry and mountaintop
removal.
Amy
Greene writes novels set in East Tennessee. Long Man is set in 1936, when the TVA
wants to dam the river and flood the surrounding communities. Annie Clyde Dotson’s
family has lived on this land for generations, and she is determined to try to
hold on to it for her daughter.
Denise
Giardina writes a variety of historical fiction. Born in Bluefield, WV,
she is the author of two acclaimed Appalachian novels. Storming Heaven begins in the 1890s,
when miners began to unionize; Unquiet Earth picks up in the 1930s.
Giardina likes to tell her stories through her characters, presenting different
viewpoints.
Brian
Panowich writes gritty thrillers that have been dubbed “Country Noir”
for vivid landscapes and violent crime.
In Bull Mountain, a sheriff whose family has lived on the land
for generations has to contend with balancing duty and family ties.
Other authors to consider:
Adriana Trigiani, Jesse Stuart,
Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Morgan, Charles Frazier
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