The idea of place--any place--remains one of our most basic yet slippery concepts. It is a space with boundaries whose limits may be definite or indefinite; it can be a real location or an abstract mental, spiritual, or imaginary construction. Casey Clabough’s thorough examination of the importance of place in southern literature examines the works of a wide range of authors, including Fred Chappell, George Garrett, William Hoffman, Julien Green, Kelly Cherry, David Huddle, and James Dickey. Clabough expands the definition of "here" beyond mere geography, offering nuanced readings that examine tradition and nostalgia and explore the existential nature of "place." Deeply concerned with literature as a form of emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic engagement with the local and the regional, Clabough considers the idea of place in a variety of ways: as both a physical and metaphorical location; as an important factor in shaping an individual, informing one of the ways the person perceives the world; and as a temporal as well as geographic construction. This fresh and useful contribution to the scholarship on southern literature explains how a text can open up new worlds for readers if they pay close enough attention to place.

The first book-length examination of the award-winning author of poetry and fiction firmly rooted in Appalachia Since his dramatic appearance on the southern literary stage with his debut novel, One Foot in Eden, Ron Rash has continued a prolific outpouring of award-winning poetry and fiction. His status as a regular on the New York Times Best Sellers list, coupled with his impressive critical acclaim—including two O. Henry Awards and the Frank O'Connor Award for Best International Short Fiction—attests to both his wide readership and his brilliance as a literary craftsman. In Summoning the Dead, editors Randall Wilhelm and Zackary Vernon have assembled the first book-length collection of scholarship on Ron Rash. The volume features the work of respected scholars in southern and Appalachian studies, providing a disparate but related constellation of interdisciplinary approaches to Rash's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The editors contend that Rash's work is increasingly relevant and important on regional, national, and global levels in part because of its popular and scholarly appeal and also its invaluable social critiques and celebrations, thus warranting academic attention. Wilhelm and Vernon argue that studying Rash is important because he encourages readers and critics alike to understand Appalachia in all its complexity and he consistently provides portrayals of the region that reveal both the beauty of its cultures and landscapes as well as the social and environmental pathologies that it continues to face. The landscapes, peoples, and cultures that emerge in Rash's work represent and respond to not only Appalachia or the South, but also to national and global cultures. Firmly rooted in the mountain South, Rash's artistic vision weaves the truths of the human condition and the perils of the human heart in a poetic language that speaks deeply to us all. Through these essays, offering a range of critical and theoretical approaches that examine important aspects of Rash's work, Wilhelm and Vernon create a foundation for the future of Rash studies. Robert Morgan, Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University and author of fourteen books of poetry and nine volumes of fiction including the New York Times bestselling novel Gap Creek, provides a foreword.

The idea of place--any place--remains one of our most basic yet slippery concepts. It is a space with boundaries whose limits may be definite or indefinite; it can be a real location or an abstract mental, spiritual, or imaginary construction. Casey Clabough's thorough examination of the importance of place in southern literature examines the works of a wide range of authors, including Fred Chappell, George Garrett, William Hoffman, Julien Green, Kelly Cherry, David Huddle, and James Dickey. Clabough expands the definition of "here" beyond mere geography, offering nuanced readings that examine tradition and nostalgia and explore the existential nature of "place." Deeply concerned with literature as a form of emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic engagement with the local and the regional, Clabough considers the idea of place in a variety of ways: as both a physical and metaphorical location; as an important factor in shaping an individual, informing one of the ways the person perceives the world; and as a temporal as well as geographic construction. This fresh and useful contribution to the scholarship on southern literature explains how a text can open up new worlds for readers if they pay close enough attention to place.

Appalachian literature is filled with silent or non-discursive characters. The reasons for their wordlessness vary. Some are mute or pretend to be, some choose not to speak or are silenced by grief, trauma or fear. Others mutter monosyllables, stutter, grunt and point, speak in tongues or idiosyncratic language. They capture the reader's attention by what they don't say.

Featuring essays written by an international team of experts, this Companion maps the dynamic literary landscape of the American South.

Despite the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding Appalachia, the region has nurtured and inspired some of the nation's finest writers. Featuring dozens of authors born into or adopted by the region over the past two centuries, Writing Appalachia showcases for the first time the nuances and contradictions that place Appalachia at the heart of American history. This comprehensive anthology covers an exceedingly diverse range of subjects, genres, and time periods, beginning with early Native American oral traditions and concluding with twenty-first-century writers such as Wendell Berry, bell hooks, Silas House, Barbara Kingsolver, and Frank X Walker. Slave narratives, local color writing, folklore, work songs, modernist prose—each piece explores unique Appalachian struggles, questions, and values. The collection also celebrates the significant contributions of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to the region's history and culture. Alongside Southern and Central Appalachian voices, the anthology features northern authors and selections that reflect the urban characteristics of the region. As one text gives way to the next, a more complete picture of Appalachia emerges—a landscape of contrasting visions and possibilities.

In their variety, the memoir, poetry, and fiction included in this exciting new anthology show the transitory nature of the literature of southern women who lived through a violent and defining crossroads in their lives. In rare and rediscovered excerpts and verses these women writers evidence the early hopes of a cause destined to be lost, the propagandic rhetoric which accompanied it, and the destruction ultimately visited upon them, their homes, and their families. Paradoxically, even as these women defended and spoke out for a cause concerned in part with extending human bondage, they found themselves forced to experience the harsh wind of freedom and personal agency as their husbands, sons, and fathers abandoned them to their homes and, in many cases, never returned. The editor, who also serves as editor of the literature section of the Virginia Foundation for Humanities' Encyclopedia Virginia, has chosen these pieces carefully and arranged them chronologically or thematically depending on the content of each genre. A book that should prove useful to literary scholars, historians, and anyone possessed on an interest in the Civil War, Women of War brings to light a cornucopia of heretofore obscure women's writings which enrich our understanding of a complex, unsettling time unmatched in our nation's history.

Considering George Garrett’s life and work in the continuum of American literary history, it is perhaps most profitable to place him in the tradition of the now exceedingly rare Southern “man of letters”—he (or she) who embraces and produces literature in all its complexity and in multiple forms (novels, short stories, poems, plays, criticism, translation, editing, and so on). This kind of Southern writer, stretching back to Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps finds its best modern examples in the Nashville-based writers of the 1920s and 1930s. Chronologically, Garrett, born in 1929, probably was the most variously gifted Southern writer to arrive on the scene following Robert Penn Warren. Indeed, it is in such company that his life and work belong.

"I know of no other book exactly like this one, yet it is part of a tradition. One thinks of the best work of John McPhee, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard. The writing is at once eloquent, elegant, and evocative. In short, it is a beautifully written work: a genuine pleasure to read, and to re-read." -George Garrett "Casey Clabough's unique vision, his curious and important quest, his personable and earnest manner of expression draw us into his world just that engagingly. His world is our world, too, the trace our ancestors followed into the wilderness to transform a landscape into a nation. History, memoir, travel journal, meditation--The Warrior's Path is all these things at once, its firm understanding of the past made lyric with lively language. This is a volume to keep close at hand when doubts about our American destiny begin to assail. Solid, durable, and--entrancing." --Fred Chappell "This account draws us deep into an intimacy with our geography and culture, with all the triumphs, failures, and contradictions we are heir to." -Robert Morgan, author of Brave Enemies and Boone: A Biography One of North America's oldest and most storied routes, "the Warrior's Path," as it was known by the Iroquois, was formed centuries ago by migrating animals and the humans who followed them. It spanned from the Iroquois lands of what is today New York State down the Appalachian Valley system and into the Cherokee country of Tennessee and North Georgia. Casey Clabough recently set out to hike more than five hundred miles of the route from Maryland to Tennessee and, in the process, to connect history, culture, and nature to the story of his own colonial German ancestors who traversed that particular section en route to the Smoky Mountains at the close of the 1700s. The Warrior's Path is both the story of Clabough's journey and a philosophical meditation upon the extraordinary people and events that have populated the thoroughfare over the course of several centuries. Rich in energy and lore, Clabough deftly employs both his ancestors' journey and his own as springboards for understanding the path's and the region's centrality in the American experience. As he contemplates the past, Clabough conjures and evokes countless historical images: from sketches of the grand French-Indian and Revolutionary struggles to the hardscrabble circumstances of his own Appalachian ancestors. At once richly philosophical, minutely historical, and highly personal, the book invites the reader to accompany Clabough on his journey as he recounts a contemplative, provocative, and at times harrowing, experience that is sure to delight and fascinate readers. Casey Clabough is Associate Professor of English and English Graduate Coordinator at Lynchburg College in Virginia. He also serves as literature editor for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities' Encyclopedia Virginia. The author of scholarly books on James Dickey and Fred Chappell, his work has appeared in Callaloo, Contemporary Literature, Shenandoah, The Hollins Critic, The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Alvis Stevens has a price on his head. The death of one abusive federal occupation soldier in the wake of the Civil War weighs more heavily upon him than all of the men he killed during the conflict as a member of Mosby's Rangers. The devastation visited upon the South already has forced some of its citizens to seek new lives abroad; among them, Lavinia, the prewar love Alvis believes he has lost forever. At the urging of his uncle, Thomas Bocock, Alvis seeks to evade his pursuers and join the migration to Brazil. Based on a true story and rich in historical events and personages, Confederado records one man's epic adventure across wars and hemispheres.