Appalachian Review

Two Essays on Best American Essays 2022 Notables List

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Best American Essays

Congratulations to Martha Grace Duncan and Jake Maynard, whose essays “Cattle Upon a Thousand Hills” and “This American Fife” were named as Notable in Best American Essays 2022. The essays were selected by series editor Alexander Chee and series editor Robert Atwan. We’re also thrilled that essays by Appalachian Review contributors Silas House,…

2021 Denny C. Plattner Awards

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

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Plattner Awards

We are proud to announce the winners of the annual Denny C. Plattner Awards, which were established in 1995 by Kenneth and Elissa Plattner to honor their late son and his love of writing. The awards are given to the finest pieces of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry that appeared…

In Conversation: Neema Avashia

Skylar Bensheimer ♦

Summer 2022 ♦

Interview

“In truth, I’ve always felt uneasy in my relationship to the word ‘Appalachian’… do you not count if you are Brown, Indian, the child of immigrants who moved to a place out of necessity again thirty years later, when work disappeared?” Neema Avashia writes in Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian…

Grasping at Grace

Quincy Gray McMichael ♦

Summer 2022 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

When I open the door of my father’s truck, all I smell is hot banana. His Ford stays ripe with carpentry odors—sweat, sawdust—but he always has at least one brown banana on the dash, roasting in the Maine sun. I hold my breath as I scoot into the middle of the…

On Naming and Lessons Learned

Qrescent Mali Mason ♦

Spring 2022 ♦

bell hooks Tribute, Creative Nonfiction

I have been thinking a lot about grief and love, having recently lost three of my most beloved and influential Black women elders, beginning with bell in December of 2021 and then my paternal grandmother, Gloria Evadne Atherton on March 18, 2022, and four days later, my paternal aunt, my Auntie…

In Conversation: Jocelyn Nicole Johnson & Monic Ductan

Monic Ductan ♦

Spring 2022 ♦

Interview

Timely: that’s but one word to describe Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s electric debut My Monticello, a collection of stories and a novella that bears witness to the white supremacy of both the past and present. Set in and around Charlottesville, Virginia, where Johnson lives and writes, the book centers on Black…

Blue Ridge Bobby

Caroline McTeer ♦

Spring 2022 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

The door opened and Johnson Gibbs stood solidly in it. His blue eyes were very bright. There was full sunlight now and it made a burning glare on the snow. Against this harsh light Johnson’s figure loomed black, black as velvet, blackly burning, and his voice sounded deep and hollow:…

Birds in War

Elaine Neil Orr ♦

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 ♦

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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…