Appalachian Review

Birds in War

Spring 2022 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

With all of the bombing and explosions and smoke everywhere, the impact of all of that on birds and other wildlife can be so significant that it is hard to speculate on the extent . . . [I]t is like a web, like breaking glass and watching it shatter out…

In Conversation: Gavin Colton Discusses “Little Piles of Change”

Skylar Bensheimer ♦

Blog ♦

Interview

Gavin Colton is a fiction writer from Ireland currently living in Lexington, Kentucky where he teaches creative writing workshops at the Carnegie Center. He also coaches academy soccer. His short story, “Little Piles of Changes,” appeared in Appalachian Review’s Winter 2022 issue and follows the working-class family of Colly, Nicole,…

Little Piles of Change

Gavin Colton ♦

Winter 2022 ♦

Fiction

Colly was having a pint with Pat in Kavanagh’s after work. Pat had won twenty euro on a scratcher that morning and Colly knew it had been burning a hole in his pocket all day, that he’d be gunning for a pint. Colly was happy not to be going home…

Drought Conditions: Personal Accounts from the 2016 Gatlinburg Wildfires

Jacquelyn Scott ♦

Winter 2022 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

WBIR-TV November 1, 2016—Because of the danger of wildfire, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has temporarily banned all backcountry fires. East Tennessee is in the midst of a drought, and with the falling leaves now on the ground, the danger of wildfire is very high. Thousands of acres have burned…

In Conversation: Marianne Worthington

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Winter 2022 ♦

Interview

As a child growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the 1950s and 1960s, Marianne Worthington was surrounded and subsumed by country music. Her parents often tuned their television set to WATE, the local station that aired Knoxville businessman-turned-mayor Cas Walker’s Farm and Home Hour variety show, which featured established and…

In Conversation: Jayne Moore Waldrop

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Fall 2021 ♦

Interview

In “For What It’s Worth,” one of the stories that populate Jayne Moore Waldrop’s tender, linked story collection Drowned Town, a character muses about “generational labor.” The notion is at the heart of this book, which considers how the federal government’s seizure of land in western Kentucky to create two…

Ultraviolet

Reshmi Hebbar ♦

Summer 2021 ♦

Fiction

If Jaya had been paying closer attention, the tea wouldn’t have been necessary. It had seemed like an extreme measure to take, relevant only to those with severe anxiety instead of distracted suburban women like herself. Yet how mild were its effects now, just the amplification of these animal sounds…

The Husband Tree

Devon Capizzi ♦

Summer 2021 ♦

Fiction

My daughter is working, early, in the yard. I hear her footsteps from my bedroom, my windows overlooking the teardrop of grass and the ring of hostas and ferns, the Japanese Maple on the very edge of my property. It’s been this way all summer. She’s left her job, moved…

Persona Poem of the Shakespearean Witchnurse in A Winter’s Tale

Elizabeth Upshur ♦

Summer 2021 ♦

Poetry

I think but of Apollo, his sunned visage bright as second winter stars to gaze upon, methinks my queen was his true equal a like as like to God enthrone- ed. O even as the fair and gentle Dian beside her too as sweet maiden ness can boast was she,…

Treebeard

Andrew K. Clark ♦

Summer 2021 ♦

Poetry

It now appears that certain trees lower and raise their branches, not only at nightfall or sunrise, but also with shorter periods, such as two hours. It’s as if they have an internal heartbeat. —The Scientific and Medical Network Journal, 2018. busy as we are we feel your longing…