Summary

This gonzo-style metamemoir follows Chuck Kinder on a wild tour of the back roads of his home state of West Virginia, where he encounters Mountain State legends like Sid Hatfield, Dagmar, Robert C. Byrd, the Mothman, Chuck Yeager, Soupy Sales, Don Knotts, and Jesco White, the “Dancing Outlaw.”

Contents

Author

Chuck Kinder is the author of four novels—Snakehunter, The Silver Ghost, Honeymooners, and Last Mountain Dancer—and three collections of poetry—Imagination Motel, All That Yellow, and Hot Jewels.

Kinder was born and raised in West Virginia. He received a BA and MA in English from West Virginia University, where he wrote the first creative writing thesis in school history, which evolved into his first novel, Snakehunter. He later caught a Greyhound and headed west to join friends living in San Francisco.

In 1971 Kinder was awarded the Edith Mirrielees Writing Fellowship to Stanford University, followed by the Jones Lectureship in Fiction Writing. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Davis, and at the University of Alabama, and he is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and Yaddo’s Dorothy and Granville Hicks Fellowship.

At Stanford, Kinder became close friends with fellow students Raymond Carver, Scott Turow, and Larry McMurtry. His relationship with Carver inspired Honeymooners. His struggle to complete this book inspired the character Grady Tripp in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys.

As a professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh for more than three decades, Kinder served as the director of the creative writing program and helped foster the careers of Michael Chabon, Earl H. McDaniel, Chuck Rosenthal, Gretchen Moran Laskas, and Keely Bowers.

He now lives in Key Largo, Florida, with Diane Cecily, his wife of over forty years.

Reviews

“Novelist Kinder pours out sudden, undomesticated, melancholy word songs from his home place, where he’s returned to gather stories for stewing in his imagination and memory.” 
Kirkus Reviews

“Colorful enough to inspire Michael Douglas’ character, Grady Tripp, in the movie Wonder Boys, Kinder starts with the most interesting West Virginian available: himself.”
Alan Moores, Booklist

“Sparks fly, plans are hatched, threats are made, and a lot of legally questionable activity is engaged in, and Kinder’s fine prose relates it all.”
Publishers Weekly

“Unapologetic, honest, and blunt, Kinder tells stories of living life by the mountain code.”
San Francisco Gate

Summary

First published in 1973, this debut novel is the deeply moving coming-of-age story of Speer Whitfield, whose recollection of his upbringing and his large, remarkable, and often peculiar family evokes the forces that set the path for a boy’s growth into manhood in 1940s Appalachia.

Contents

Coming soon.     

Author

Chuck Kinder is the author of four novels—Snakehunter, The Silver Ghost, Honeymooners, and Last Mountain Dancer—and three collections of poetry—Imagination Motel, All That Yellow, and Hot Jewels.

Kinder was born and raised in West Virginia. He received a BA and MA in English from West Virginia University, where he wrote the first creative writing thesis in school history, which evolved into his first novel, Snakehunter. He later caught a Greyhound and headed west to join friends living in San Francisco.

In 1971 Kinder was awarded the Edith Mirrielees Writing Fellowship to Stanford University, followed by the Jones Lectureship in Fiction Writing. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Davis, and at the University of Alabama, and he is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and Yaddo’s Dorothy and Granville Hicks Fellowship.

At Stanford, Kinder became close friends with fellow students Raymond Carver, Scott Turow, and Larry McMurtry. His relationship with Carver inspired Honeymooners. His struggle to complete this book inspired the character Grady Tripp in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys.

As a professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh for more than three decades, Kinder served as the director of the creative writing program and helped foster the careers of Michael Chabon, Earl H. McDaniel, Chuck Rosenthal, Gretchen Moran Laskas, and Keely Bowers.

He now lives in Key Largo, Florida, with Diane Cecily, his wife of over forty years.

Reviews

“A beautifully achieved novel, wrought in a prose warmed and contoured with kind of a sculptor’s touch, evoked in crystal-bright incidents which bend neither to sentiment nor easy bitterness.”
Scott Turow,  San Francisco Chronicle

“An excellent novel about a West Virginia childhood. Kinder has, to begin with, a good sense of his region: he has rested his story on the firmest possible bases, namely character and place. His dialogue, particularly that of his female characters, is first rate. One would like to secure for this excellently crafted book all the readers one can.”
Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post

“A beautiful novel.”
Gurney Norman, author of Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories

“A language feast, sweet and sad as the West Virginia landscape it describes. Ahead of its time when first published, this important novel now at last has a chance to find its true audience.”
Ed McClanahan, author of The Natural Man

Summary

The residents of The Sound of Holding Your Breath could be neighbors, sharing the same familiar landscapes of twenty-first-century Appalachia—lake and forest, bridge and church, cemetery and garden, diner and hair salon. They could be your neighbors—average, workaday, each struggling with secrets and losses, entrenched in navigating the complex requirements of family in all its forms.

Yet tragedy and violence challenge these unassuming lives: A teenage boy is drawn to his sister’s husband, an EMT searching the lake for a body. A brother, a family, and a community fail to confront the implications of a missing girl. A pregnant widow spends Thanksgiving with her deceased husband’s family. Siblings grapple with the death of their sister-in-law at the hands of their brother. And in the title story, the shame of rape ruptures more than a decade later.

Accidents and deaths, cons and cover-ups, abuse and returning veterans—Natalie Sypolt’s characters wrestle with who they are during the most trying situations of their lives.

Contents

Diving
Flaming Jesus 
Ghosts 
Get Up, June   
At the Lake     
Home Visit     
Handlers          
Love, Off to the Side  
Wanting Baby 
Lettuce                         
My Brothers and Me   
What Would Be Saved           
The Sound of Holding Your Breath    
Stalking the White Deer         
Acknowledgments      

Author

Natalie Sypolt is an assistant professor at Pierpont Community & Technical College. She coordinates the high school workshop for the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop at West Virginia University and has served as a literary editor for the Anthology of Appalachian Writers. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Appalachian Heritage, Kenyon Review Online, and Willow Springs. She is the winner of the Glimmer Train new writers contest, the Betty Gabehart Prize, the West Virginia Fiction Award, and the Still fiction contest. This is her first book. Learn more at nataliesypolt.com.

Reviews

"Natalie Sypolt has written gorgeous stories about a much-maligned region and a people that are too often viewed from the interstate, in photographs, or on the screen. If these viewers were to slow down and open the pages of a book like this one, they would discover lives not so different from their own, and they would find a people hewn by place, tied to one another, defined by hope and rage and heart. This is an important book by an important writer."
Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad

“Sypolt writes with sober love and unselfconscious respect from the insides of people and a place too many writers touch only from the outside. An impressive debut.”
Ann Pancake, author of Strange As This Weather Has Been

“A bold and important debut that announces a major new voice. It's also the best story collection I've read in a long while.”
Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt and Southernmost

"Full of powerful images."
Kirkus Reviews

"Examines the best and worst of humanity in modern-day Appalachia."
Publishers Weekly

"Sypolt catches her unassuming characters—friends, neighbors, and families—in the most trying times of their lives, and her vivid descriptions and masterful storytelling make every sentence, setting, and situation come alive."
Booklist 

"Full of inevitability and resignation and haunted by themes of class, family, and place, The Sound of Holding Your Breath penetrates a deep-rooted consistency that’s both a comfort and a curse."
Foreword Reviews

“These bold stories of individuals in conflict and love, rooted deep in their families and communities, echo those of Sherwood Anderson, Carson McCullers, and Breece Pancake. At the same time, Sypolt depicts contemporary Appalachia like no one else. This is a rich and astonishing debut.”
Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree and coeditor of Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia

Summary

In 1986 Lon Savage published Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21, a popular history now considered a classic. Among those the book influenced are Denise Giardina, author of Storming Heaven, and John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan. When Savage passed away, he left behind an incomplete book manuscript about a lesser-known Mother Jones crusade in Kanawha County, West Virginia. His daughter Ginny Savage Ayers drew on his notes and files, as well as her own original research, to complete Never Justice, Never Peace—the first book-length account of the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike of 1912–13.

Savage and Ayers offer a narrative history of the strike that weaves together threads about organizer Mother Jones, the United Mine Workers union, politicians, coal companies, and Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency guards with the experiences of everyday men and women. The result is a compelling and in-depth treatment that brings to light an unjustly neglected—and notably violent—chapter of labor history. Introduced by historian Lou Martin, Never Justice, Never Peace provides an accessible glimpse into the lives and personalities of many participants in this critical struggle.

Contents

Preface            
Acknowledgments     
Introduction, Lou Martin       
1. Into the Fight          
2. As Hatred Mounted 
3. Evolution and Revolution   
4. “Take Your Hats Off to ‘Mother’ Jones!”  
5. “Organize Us!”       
6. “The Guards Have Got to Go!”      
7. A “Peace Proclamation”      
8. Walking the Creek  
9. A State of War        
10. Mountainsides to Meeting Rooms            
11. “That Scab Labor”            
12. A Tear in Each Lump of Coal      
13. Yuletide in Union Tents   
14. Pardons and Politics          
15. “Thirsty to Shed Human Blood” 
16. A Desperate Undertaking 
17. Under Arrest         
18. Life in the Bull Pen          
19. A Constitutional Obstacle 
20. The Trial   
21. “Here Is My Stake in This Country”        
22. “See Her Safe in ——”    
23. Freedom and Suppression 
24. “Fight Her All Over Again”         
Notes   
Index   

Author

Lon Kelly Savage (1928–2004) grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. He wrote Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21, a classic popular history. Savage worked as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a bureau chief for United Press International, and an administrator at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Ginny Savage Ayers, daughter of Lon Savage, has worked for many years in scientific research and teaching. She currently resides in Maryville, Tennessee, where she is involved in several environmental and social causes.

Reviews

“Lon Savage and Ginny Savage Ayers have written an account of one of the seminal confrontations in the history of the American labor movement that is both exhaustively researched and a real page-turner. Especially compelling is their insight into Mother Jones, that human detonator in constant search of dynamite.”
John Sayles

"Fascinating and accessible."
Choice 

"A remarkable product of intricate, careful research that stands as the most detailed history of Paint Creek and Cabin Creek now available."
Journal of Southern History

Summary

Oil and Urbanization on the Pacific Coast tells the story of oilman Ralph Bramel Lloyd, a small business owner who drove the development of one of America’s largest oil fields. Lloyd invested his petroleum earnings in commercial real estate—much of it centered on automobiles and the fuel they require—in several western cities, notably Portland, Oregon. Putting the history of extractive industry in dialogue with the history of urban development, Michael R. Adamson shows how energy is woven into the fabric of modern life, and how the “energy capital” of Los Angeles exerted far-flung influence in the US West.

A contribution to the relatively understudied history of small businesses in the United States, Oil and Urbanization on the Pacific Coast explores issues of interest to multiple audiences, such as the competition for influence over urban development waged among local growth machines and outside corporate interests; the urban rivalries of a region; the importance of public capital in mobilizing the commercial real estate sector during the Great Depression and World War II; and the relationships among owners, architects, and contractors in the execution of commercial building projects.

Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables  
Acknowledgments      
List of Abbreviations  
Introduction: The Role of the Independent Oil Operator       
1. Developing the Ventura Avenue Field       
2. Local Elites, Outside Companies, and Ventura’s Oil Boom         
3. Making Portland a Wonderful City            
4. False Start: Ralph Lloyd’s East Side Dream Falls Short   
5. The Lloyd Corporation Becomes an Independent Operator         
6. Depression-Era Commercial Real Estate Development and Management            
7. Public Capital and the Development of Portland’s East Side        
8. The Suburbanization of Urban Space: The Lloyd Center  
Conclusion      
Collections     
Notes  
Index   

Author

Michael R. Adamson is the author of A Better Way to Build: A History of the Pankow Companies. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is an independent scholar whose essays on business and urban history and US foreign economic policy have appeared in many peer-reviewed journals and scholarly collections.

Reviews

“This meticulously researched biography makes a valuable contribution to American business history by showing how Ralph Lloyd navigated a changing energy and real estate environment. It explores the interactions between oil field development and urban development, both on the scene in Ventura as a boom town and away from the scene in Los Angeles and Portland as opportunities for investment.”
Carl Abbott, author of How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America 

“A tour de force. Adamson’s command of business history and the depth of his research are stunning. This is, hands down, the most meticulous study of an independent oilman I have ever read.”
Diana Hinton, author of Shale Boom: The Barnett Shale Play and Fort Worth

Summary

What happens when fossil fuels run out? How do communities and cultures survive?

Central Appalachia and south Wales were built to extract coal, and faced with coal’s decline, both regions have experienced economic depression, labor unrest, and out-migration. After Coal focuses on coalfield residents who chose not to leave, but instead remained in their communities and worked to build a diverse and sustainable economy. It tells the story of four decades of exchange between two mining communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and profiles individuals and organizations that are undertaking the critical work of regeneration.

The stories in this book are told through interviews and photographs collected during the making of After Coal, a documentary film produced by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University and directed by Tom Hansell. Considering resonances between Appalachia and Wales in the realms of labor, environment, and movements for social justice, the book approaches the transition from coal as an opportunity for marginalized people around the world to work toward safer and more egalitarian futures.

Contents

Acknowledgments      
Introduction     
1. Why Appalachia and Wales?          
2. Historical Context   
3. Turning Points        
4. Exploring Regeneration      
5. Back in the USA    
6. The Next Phase of the Exchange    
7. Conclusions             
Production Credits for the After Coal Documentary  
Notes   
Bibliography   
Index   

Author

Tom Hansell is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been broadcast on public television and screened at international film festivals. Hansell has more than two decades of experience working with coalfield residents to create collaborative media projects. He began his career at the Appalshop media arts center, and he currently teaches at Appalachian State University.

Reviews

"Visually appealing . . . . Hansell promises no easy answers, but his optimistic work showcases multiple community-building efforts."
Publishers Weekly

"After Coal is an inspiring record of community-driven change that shows us what a great debt we owe to artists, organizers, and visionaries who approach the often overwhelming task of economic transition with clear eyes and a desire for a better future.”
Elizabeth Catte, author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

“A badly needed analysis of the situation where post-coal Appalachia finds itself. Books like Hansell’s are necessary to help the region move forward.”
Denise Giardina, author of six novels, including Storming Heaven

“After Coal is a deeply moving account of a long-term exchange between miners in the coalfields of central Appalachia and south Wales where, between 1980 and 2000, both regions lost thousands of mining jobs. Tom Hansell captures their struggles through the voices of miners and their families. He brings the reader face to face with Appalachian and Welsh coal miners whose stories will touch the reader’s heart.”
William Ferris, author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal

Elizabeth Catte Interview

Elizabeth Catte—editor at large at West Virginia University Press and author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia—talks with author and filmmaker Tom Hansell about After Coal: Stories of Survival in Appalachia and Wales.