Interview – Page 2 – Appalachian Review

In Conversation: Carter Sickels

Robert Gipe ♦

Spring 2020 ♦

Interview

In January, as he walked through the crowded streets of Park City, Utah, Carter Sickels’s year looked set. The film adaptation of his debut novel The Evening Hour had just premiered to critical buzz at the Sundance Film Festival. Praise was already rolling in for his second novel The Prettiest…

Interview: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Silas House ♦

Fall 2019/Winter 2020 ♦

Interview

When it is published later this year, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle’s debut novel will mark a milestone in American and Appalachian literature. Even As We Breathe, which tells the story of a young Cherokee man struggling with the limitations of his community and the prejudice of the outside world, will be…

Interview: Margaret Renkl

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Summer 2019 ♦

Interview

The shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin,” Margaret Renkl writes in the opening pages of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, her memoir-in-micro-essays that was released earlier this year to glowing reviews.These wise, bracing words underpin the entire book, which…

Interview: Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Emily Masters ♦

Issues, Spring 2019 ♦

Interview

Americans are less able than ever to tell the difference between real and fake,” memoirist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman says. “And we are all suffering for it.” This blunt observation about our current national moment strikes at the heart of her debut memoir, Sounds Like Titanic, which tells the story of…

Interview with Charles Dodd White

Emily Masters ♦

Issues, Winter 2019 ♦

Interview

“I’m trying to show characters that endure despite terrible things that happen to them,” says Charles Dodd White about his most recent novel In the House of Wilderness, published by Ohio University Press in 2018. Striking a balance between darkness and beauty, between violence and joy, the novel brings to…

Interview: Filmmaker Sally Rubin

Emily Masters ♦

Fall 2018, Issues ♦

Interview

hillbilly, the new documentary film directed by Sally Rubin and Ashley York, is an examination of images and stereotypes about Appalachia and its people. The film works to combat stereotypes of Appalachia as a homogeneous region, using the 2016 presidential election as a window for examining how the region is…

In Conversation: bell hooks and Fenton Johnson

bell hooks ♦

Summer 2018 ♦

Interview

When Appalachian Heritage hosted a conversation between bell hooks and Fenton Johnson in April, the two native Kentuckians spoke to a packed house filled with students, professors, community members, and even a couple who had driven in from Texas specially for the event. After Johnson read from his recently published…

In Conversation: Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon & Rebecca Gayle Howell

Silas House ♦

Spring 2018 ♦

Interview

When the 2017 Appalachian Symposium was held at Berea College last fall, expectations were high. After all, the debut of the biennial event in September 2015 had set a high bar, when thirty of Appalachia’s most celebrated and active writers had gathered to discuss the current state of literature and…

Interview: Jesse Donaldson

Emily Masters ♦

Winter 2018 ♦

Interview

I’m drawn to Kentucky not because it’s some Shangri-La but because it is a complicated place,” says Jesse Donaldson, author of the recent novel The More They Disappear and a native of the Commonwealth who left to attend college in Texas. Now living with his wife and daughter across the country in Oregon, he has found himself drawn back to…

Interview: Maurice Manning

Maurice Manning ♦

Fall 2017 ♦

Interview

Maurice Manning lives both in and apart from the world. On one hand, he is actively engaged with his own farm and is a vocal environmentalist and activist. He is a respected writer and teacher in local, regional, and national writing communities. On the other hand, he eschews any type of…