Jason Kyle Howard – Page 4 – Appalachian Review

Spring 2016 Editor’s Note

Spring 2016 ♦

Editor's Note

I grew up in southeastern Kentucky near Straight Creek, a body of water with bends and curves that contradicted its name. My friends and I often waded in its placid waters, hunting for crawdads as the heat bugs sang a steady chorus in the brambles and treetops. But the creek…

Interview: Kathleen Driskell

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Winter 2016 ♦

Interview

“I’ve had a lot of different experiences with graveyards,” says Kathleen Driskell. As a child growing up in rural Peewee Valley outside of Louisville, she often hopped a fence to visit an old Confederate cemetery near her home. “My mother and father argued all the time, and to get away from…

Winter 2016 Editor’s Note

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Winter 2016 ♦

Editor's Note, Kentucky Arts Council, Plattner Awards

This January, the arts community in Kentucky had a close shave. Rumors were rife that Matt Bevin, the Commonwealth’s new governor, was planning to propose abolishing the Kentucky Arts Council in his budget. Such a move would have been disastrous for artists and arts lovers alike: in 2015, the state…

2015 Denny C. Plattner Awards

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Blog ♦

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…

Fall 2015 Editor’s Note

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Fall 2015 ♦

Editor's Note

In her memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, bell hooks writes of growing up in small town Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in the 1950s—of a girl “young, gifted, and black” who finds refuge in books, who creates a secret world, who notices the roles women and men play in her culture. It’s…

Summer 2015 Editor’s Note

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Summer 2015 ♦

Editor's Note

During their panel discussion titled “Voice Lessons” at the 2015 Appalachian Studies Association Conference, writers and teachers Darnell Arnoult, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Amanda Jo Runyon, and Jessie van Eerden offered their thoughts on voice in creative writing. They talked of the vital voices that have shaped their work over the…

Interview: Jessie van Eerden

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Summer 2015 ♦

Interview

Jessie van Eerden’s speaking voice is gentle, inviting, smooth as a creek stone. She’s reading of prayers, of a woman wearing a black slip and smoking Pall Malls, of the “cloud of witnesses” from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, and her listeners are entranced, transported far from this dull…

Spring 2015 Editor’s Note

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Spring 2015 ♦

Editor's Note

Since February, three friends of mine have been diagnosed with cancer. Their stories are all too familiar. A few odd pains—nothing too severe— an eventual doctor’s visit, followed by a couple more, and finally, a diagnosis that seemingly came from out of the blue. They are all in their sixties.…

2014 Weatherford Award Winners

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

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Congratulations to the 2014 Weatherford Award winners, which were announced on Friday, March 27th at the annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference. The award is given by ASA and Berea College in recognition of books that “best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.” Fiction: Marie Manilla, The…

“Pain Pills” by Angaleena Presley

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

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Eastern Kentucky native Angaleena Presley‘s debut solo album, American Middle Class, was released in 2014 to widespread praise, following a career of songwriting and hit-making with country supergroup The Pistol Annies. Here’s a twangy track titled “Pain Pills.”