Appalachian Review

Where Have All the Safety Pins Gone?

Summer 2020 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

2016 was the year of trauma. Prince died. Muhammad Ali died. Harper Lee died. The Pulse nightclub shooting occurred. Philando Castile was murdered by the police in front of his girlfriend and her four year old daughter. Donald Trump was elected president. Trauma. One trauma after another. My life has…

Secondhand Stories

Rebecca Hazelwood ♦

Spring 2020 ♦

Creative Nonfiction

Most summer Saturday nights of my childhood, I snuggled in the crook of Granny Gracie’s bare legs, just the two of us watching The Golden Girls on the big box TV in her living room, taking lessons from Blanche Devereaux. When Blanche mentioned being as jumpy as a virgin at…

Coming Soon: Our Spring Issue

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Spring 2020 ♦

Due to the pandemic, our spring issue has been delayed but is now in the final stages of production and will be making its way to subscribers soon, followed shortly by the summer issue. Lots of fine work is inside, including a series of poems responding to our current moment…

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…

A Statement About Our Name

Jason Kyle Howard ♦

Blog ♦

When Appalachian Heritage was founded in 1973 by the poet Albert Stewart, it offered a haven for regional writers whose work had often been overlooked and dismissed by literary gatekeepers. Twelve years later, the publication found a permanent home at Berea College in a partnership that fused Stewart’s welcoming vision with…

Gone

L. Renée ♦

Spring 2021 ♦

Poetry

It is the week after my eldest living aunt has, with us all in proximity, buried her sister. It is the second sister, out of nine siblings, she has buried. Her youngest brother, gone too. My Aunt Rosetta, of course, did not lift her eighty-five-year-old, tiny, weathered limbs toward a…

Excerpt from ‘Even As We Breathe’, a novel by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle ♦

Fall 2019/Winter 2020 ♦

Fiction

About the place—when I take you there or when you find it on your own, just know that what the old folks say is true. This land is ours because of what is buried in the ground, not what words appear on a paper. But also know this: what is…

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…

Excerpt from ‘Crazy House’, a novel by Annie Frazier

Annie Frazier ♦

Fall 2019/Winter 2020 ♦

Fiction

I’ll have that little man. That’s what Mama said to me the first time she caught sight of Bill, standing there in a grubby Food Lion in North Raleigh, overripe fruit smells wafting all around. I hefted a jug of laundry detergent into the cart and turned to look and…

Any City

Terrance Wedin ♦

Fall 2019/Winter 2020 ♦

Fiction

Mom came downstairs, her eyes looking like she’d been crying all morning. I was still in bed, in the unfinished basement that was now my room. The leggings under my sweatpants itched. She barely ran the heat anymore. Getting out of bed meant getting ready for work—putting on the yellow…