"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Posts tagged ‘West Virginia mountains’

Monday Must Read! States of Mercy, A Novel by Ace Boggess

Ace Boggess is author of the novel A Song Without a Melody and four books of poetry: I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled. He earned degrees from Marshall University and the West Virginia University College of Law. His fiction appears in Notre Dame Review, Lumina, Belmont Story Review, Superstition Review, and other journals. He received a fellowship for fiction from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

Buy States of Mercy Here! 

States of Mercy Boggess

Mercy Adams, the young existential heroine, follows a path of self-discovery through chaos at the turn of the millennium and beyond. Her friend Lucian Lang narrates the story of her struggle to overcome hurt in a world in transition. Violence, drug abuse, and a growing diversity of approaches to spirituality are the norm, setting up barriers to understanding and, ultimately, transformation. States of Mercy explores questions of identity and belief, but also friendship. How far can friends travel this road together before one goes where the other cannot follow? Mercy and Lucian intend to find out together, unless the mad world destroys them first.

 

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, healing, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, publishing, Writing

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Monday Must Read! The Long Weeping by Jessie Van Eerden

 

JessieJessie Van Eerden is the author of Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012), My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press 2016), and most recently, her collection of portrait essays,The Long Weeping, just released from Orison Books.

A West Virginia native, Jessie holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham Review, Willow Springs, Rock & Sling, Appalachian Heritage, Ruminate, and other publications. Her prose has been selected for inclusion in Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia(Vandalia Press); Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean (Ohio University Press); Red Holler (Sarabande); Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman); Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Books); and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin).

Jessie has taught for over fifteen years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She lives in West Virginia where she directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Follow Jessie on Twitter: @jessievaneerden. To see what Jessie has been reading, visit her Goodreads page. To learn more about WV Wesleyan’s MFA program (#wvwcmfa), visit the program website.

Visit Jessie’s website: http://www.jessievaneerden.com/

Buy Jessie’s beautiful books!

The Long Weeping

My Radio Radio

Glorybound

Praise for The Long Weeping

“In these startlingly honest and imaginative essays, van Eerden enlarges the world around her, giving flesh to what is all too often flattened by the outside eye, anointing places and people and the throbbing spaces between them as she searches out and sings litanies to what she calls the “larger body I belonged to and could not leave.” Lush and razor-sharp, The Long Weeping shimmers with intelligence and grace. The truest essays I’ve read in a long time.”

—Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread, Queen of the Fall, and Ladies Night at the Dreamland

“Van Eerden is one of the best essayists working today if judged by her craft and intellect alone, but her gifts go beyond those: she is also one of the most honest. The Long Weeping turns a visionary eye and a laser mind on subjects often simplified or even scorned by contemporary culture: white poverty; mysticism; love of family; the wisdom of modest people. Van Eerden is brave enough to say the hard things. She’s strong enough to love the hard places.”

—Ann Pancake, author of Given Ground, Strange as This Weather Has Been, and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley

More from Jessie Online

http://www.jessievaneerden.com/short-fiction-creative-non-fiction/

https://imagejournal.org/artist/jessie-van-eerden/

http://appalachianheritage.net/2015/09/09/interview-jessie-van-eerden/

http://cheatriverreview.com/jessie-van-eerden/

https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/works-with-soul-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden

http://memorious.org/?author=217

https://rockandsling.com/2011/03/30/an-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden/

https://web.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview/2014/05/14/jessie-van-eerden-2/

Hear Jessie Read

https://vimeo.com/217706875

 

Happy Reading, y’all!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Cat Pleska: Riding On Comets

cat pleskaCat Pleska is a seventh generation West Virginian, and an amazingly loving and generous person. She is the author of Riding on Comets, and most recently, she published a cookbook with a sense of humor, One Foot in the Gravy–Hooked on the Sauce. Cat is a writer, editor, educator, publisher, and storyteller. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. She is an essayist for West Virginia Public Radio and a book reviewer for the Charleston Gazette. She coedited the anthology Fed from the Blade: Tales and Poems from the Mountains. Pleska has been published in literary magazines and newspapers throughout the Appalachian region. She lives in Scott Depot, West Virginia, with her husband, Dan, one dog, four cats, and with a daughter, Katie, in nearby St. Albans.

Cat’s Website

Buy Cat’s Books!

Riding on Comets

Praise for Riding on Comets

“The gifts of Cat Pleska’s Riding on Comets are many: it is fresh, candid, gently humorous, tautly lyrical, and deeply moving.”-Lisa Knopp, What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte

This is a storyteller who knows how to piece together shards of story into a brilliant mosaic of a life. A joy to read.”–Janice Gary is the author of Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, winner of two Silver 2014 Nautilus Awards and a 2014 Eric Hoffer Prize for Memoir.

Cat Pleska’s restrained but graceful prose allows us to witness four generations through the eyes of the author, first as a child and then through the years that followed as her people live, age, and die. The details Pleska offers have the immediacy of truths well told, with a resolute eye and spacious heart, neither shying away from family and personal dysfunction, nor sentimentalizing the bonds of fear and love that held her family together.”–Geoffrey Cameron Fuller is an author of the true crime Pretty Little Killers and the crime thriller Full Bone Moon

One Foot in the Gravy–Hooked on the Sauce

Fed from the Blade

More from Cat Online

http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2016/04/27/reckoning-fiction-by-cat-pleska/

https://www.catpleska.com/interviews-reviews-blogs/

http://www.rednecromancer.typepad.com/mouth_of_the_holler/

https://pocahontastimes.com/memories-to-memoirs/

http://www.lauratreacybentley.com/apps/blog/entries/show/41683985-spotlight-cat-pleska

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, Writing

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Leaves, & Autumn, & Just Going From Here

10/1/2016

Walking in these West Virginia mountains 🙂

“The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.” ~Thoreau

Make art about ‘garden enough.’

pipestem-wv-e1472219030381

10/2/2016

Driving back from WV, I stopped for gas, and Road Angel Louise tells me her story of trying to recover from the recent flooding, what it’s like to lose so much. “Just go from here, I reckon,” she said.

Make art about rebounding from tragedy, about how we ‘just go from here.’

636024400462649924-ap-aptopix-severe-weather

10/3/2016

Dreamt someone I love brought me apples, Honey Crisp and Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Winesap, even a couple of Arkansas Black. He sliced one with his sharp knife, and smiling, said, Here you go, Missy. A taste of what’s to come.

Make art about the taste of autumn. Or about what’s to come.

apples-and-birds-2

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Food, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love! <3 Mountains, and Mystery, and Music–Oh My! :-)

 

13 August 2016

Headed off to wild and wonderful West Virginia for a reading. Driving through these amazing Appalachian mountains always fills me with such awe.

Make art about the mysteries felt in mountains.

WV aug 2016

14 August 2016

Road Angel named Bay, a very large beautiful young man working as a cashier in a roadside stop, his smile like a bright bright beacon, caught me doing a lil dance in the aisle to the BeeGees piping in overhead. He grinned and immediately started dancing too 😀 So we finished out Stayin Alive while I paid 🙂

Make art about dancing with strangers. 🙂

dancing with strangers

15 August 2016

Feeling this this morning, the music.

“Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song/in my own breath”~Philip Levine

Make art about the music you hear, in anything, in everything.

music in everything

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, book tour, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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