Creative Nonfiction – Appalachian Review

The Tiger in the Bin

Winter 2025 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

I am the caretaker of a permanent collection, a museum of qualified superlatives. Pieces have accrued over a long time and need collating and tagging, yes, but the whole exhibition reveals the flavor of our family—the theme, minus the things we regret tossing out, minus items eaten or worn out…

Riding the Elephant

Barbara Kingsolver ♦

Fall 2014 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

A note from the author: This is an extract from a journal I kept while I traveled through South Asia some years ago on a writing assignment. I always keep journals when I travel, because some of the information might be useful later if it’s a research trip for a…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…