“Buy this book, it’s a barn burner!”—Dorothy Allison
In an extraordinarily diverse anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narratives by contemporary Appalachian writers, Red Holler takes us over and beyond the stock imagery of rural mountain communities. We travel into housing projects, forest-stripped ravines, and trailer parks, to explore vibrant hometown and migrant Appalachian cultures. Editors John E. Branscum and Wayne Thomas have assembled a collection spanning ten years and communities in locales ranging from Mississippi to New York, placing fresh new voices alongside widely known and celebrated authors. Drawing on Appalachian literature’s roots in Native American myth, African American urban legend, and European folk culture, and embracing Appalachian urban fiction, the Southern Gothic, gritty no-holds-barred realism, and magical realism, the stories and poems of Red Holler elegantly cohere to perfectly depict what makes Appalachia so fascinating: its irreverent and outlaw challenges to mainstream notions of propriety and convention.
The anthology contains work by Nin Andrews, Makalani Bandele, Brian Barker, Pinckney Benedict, Paula Bohince, Dennis Covington, Jessie van Eerden, Jeff Mann, Maurice Manning, Desirae Matherly, Davis McCombs, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Donald Ray Pollock, Sara Pritchard, Ron Rash, Ally Reeves, R. T. Smith, Bianca Spriggs, Jane Springer, Alex Taylor, Jacinda Townsend, Charles Dodd White, Crystal Wilkinson, and Jake Adam York.
About the editors:
The son of migrant laborers, John Branscum grew up in the small-town trailer parks and inner-city housing projects of Kentucky, Arkansas, and California. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs pedagogy committee, and text editor for Black and Grey Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published in journals ranging from the Evergreen Review to North American Review, and received such recognition as the national Ursula K. Le Guin Award for Imaginative Fiction, several Academy of American Poets awards, and appearances in Best American Non-required Reading, and Best American Horror.
Wayne Thomas is the author of plays, fiction, and essays. He teaches creative writing at Tusculum College, a small school located in the northeast Tennessee mountains. He is editor of The Tusculum Review, and the recipient of the 2013 Baltic Writing Residency in Latvia.