Appalachian Review

Tammy Oberhausen explores family, faith, hypocrisy and doubt in The Evolution of the Gospelettes

Blog ♦

Fiction

The Evolution of the Gospelettes is a new novel by Tammy Oberhausen that is receiving tremendous praise these days, particularly among some of the best known names in Southern literature. It has been praised by the likes of Robert Morgan, Holly Goddard Jones, Jeff Zentner, and Lee Smith, who says…

Poems by John Brooks

John Brooks ♦

Summer 2023 ♦

Poetry

Met In an orca-colored room, we glare into a jungle which is actually Paris. I tell you I loved Rousseau when I was a young man; I am a young man and love Rousseau, you say. His half-coy beast, concerned with repast and eyeing something delicious on Bonnard’s adjacent terrace,…

On Being Still and Knowing

Lindsey Pharr ♦

Summer 2023 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

The focal point of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) is, undeniably, Galatea’s ass. It is this point on her body, just under those pert cheeks, to be exact, that her metamorphosis from cold white marble to warm, blushing flesh takes place. Standing on a platform in the middle…

In Conversation: Patricia L. Hudson

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Winter/Spring 2023 ♦

Interview

When she was writing Traces, her debut historical novel about Rebecca Boone, Patricia L. Hudson had a goal: to bridge the distance between present and past. “My goal…was to make readers feel immersed in these women’s thoughts and feelings, so that you felt as if you were moving through their…

Relief, Relief

Jeff Wallace ♦

Winter/Spring 2023 ♦

Fiction

She’d heated the ham in the fellowship hall that morning. It had been that blue time of the morning, and the swamp in front of the church was still chirping with frogs. She had let herself into the side door of the church—it was a vinyl-sided building built like a…

Yellow Jackets

Ann Pancake ♦

Winter/Spring 2023 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

Seems you were born closer to an edge than the rest of us were. Seems you knew it too. Seems maybe that was why, the bitter night you were born, you fought so hard against coming out. We roller-coasted fifteen miles of mountain road to the Richwood hospital at…

Exclusive Cover Reveal: Daughters of Muscadine

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Blog ♦

Special Feature

Appalachian Review is pleased to reveal the cover for the debut book by Monic Ductan, Daughters of Muscadine: Stories, which will be published by Fireside Industries, an imprint of the University Press of Kentucky and Hindman Settlement School, in November. The nine linked short stories are connected by a 1920s…

In Remembrance of bell hooks: On Being Human

Darnell L. Moore ♦

Spring 2022 ♦

bell hooks Tribute, Creative Nonfiction

I met bell hooks in October 2014. At the time, I still held an image of her as an iconic writer rather than an enfleshed Black woman full of desire and deep feeling. She was, after all, one of the most consequential feminist writers and intellectuals of our time. And like…

Erin Keane talks ‘Runaway’

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Fall 2022 ♦

Interview

At a greasy spoon in Louisville, Erin Keane dissects a phrase she holds in particular contempt: It was a different time. She spits it out over the clatter of dishes and shouted orders coming from the nearby kitchen, rolling her expressive eyes for good measure. The weaselly wording, she believes,…

Two Essays on Best American Essays 2022 Notables List

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Blog ♦

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,…