Bibliography
Works Read for "Writing Down the Mountains"
This book has been growing in my mind for many years of reading regional literature for both work and play. Readers may want to engage with some (or all) of the titles I've read as I taught myself about Appalachia, the people who live in it, write in it and read in it. Enjoy.
Fiction -- Novels and Short Stories
alphabetical by author
Dorothy Allison -- Bastard Out of Carolina (1992); Harriette Arnow -- The Dollmaker (1954); William Attaway -- Blood on the Forge (1941); Joseph Bathanti -- Coventry (2006); Thomas Bell -- Out of This Furnace (1941); Ashley Blooms -- Where I Can't Follow (2022); Lloyd Brown -- Iron City (1951); Amy Jo Burns -- Mercury (2024); Shiner (2020); Wiley Cash -- The Last Ballad (2017); William Demby -- Beetlecreek (1969); Damian Dressick -- 40 Patchtown (2020); Steven Dunn -- Potted Meat (2016); John Ehle -- The Road (1967); Robert Gipe -- Pop (2021), Weedeater (2018), Trampoline (2015); Rebecca Harding Davis -- Life in the Iron Mills (1861); Silas House -- Lark Ascending (2022), Southermost (2018); David Joy -- Those We Thought We Knew (2023), When These Mountains Burn (2020); The Line That Held Us (2018), The Weight of This World (2017); Barbara Kingsolver -- Demon Copperhead (2022); Meagan Lucas -- Here in the Dark (2023), Songbirds and Stray Dogs (2019); Cormac McCarthy -- Suttree (1979) Patrick McGinty -- Test Drive (2022); Jolene McIlwain -- Sidle Creek (2023); Mesha Maren -- Sugar Run (2019); Bobby Matthews -- Living the Gimmick (2022); Dave Newman -- East Pittsburgh Downlow (2019); Idra Novey -- Take What You Need (2023); Ann Pancake -- Strange As This Weather Has Been (2007); Deesha Philyaw -- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (2020); Bonnie Proudfoot -- Goshen Road (2020); Ron Rash -- Above the Waterfall (2015); Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle -- Even As We Breathe (2021); Carter Sickles -- The Prettiest Star (2020); The Evening Hour (2012); Lee Smith -- The Devil's Dream (1992); Sarah Elaine Smith -- Marilou Is Everywhere (2019); Alison Stine -- Trashlands (2021); Glenn Taylor -- The Songs of Betty Baach (2023), The Marrowbone Marble Company (2010), The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart (2008); John Edgar Wideman -- You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories (2021); Crystal Wilkinson -- The Birds of Opulence (2016); Blackberries, Blackberries (2000)
Nonfiction & Memoir
alphabetical by author
Brian Alexander -- The Glass House (2017); Neema Avashia -- Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place (2022); Earl S. Braggs -- A Boy Named Boy: Growing up Black in Whitetown During the 1960s (2021); Greg Bottoms -- Lowest White Boy (2019); Brian Broome -- Punch Me Up to the Gods (2021); Amy Jo Burns -- Cinderland (2014); Annie Dillard -- An American Childhood (1987); Elsinore Bennu Think Tank at Western Penitentiary -- Life Sentences: How to Get Out of Jail Free (2019); Eric Eyre -- Death in Mud Lick (2020); Albert French -- Patches of Fire (1997); James R. Green -- The Devil Is Here in These Hills (2015); Stacy Jane Grover -- Tar Hollow Trans (2023); Ben Gwin -- Team Building (2023); Richard Hague -- Milltown Natural (1997); David Harris -- A City Divided: Race, Fear & the Law in Police Confrontations (2020); James Tate Hill -- Blind Man's Bluff (2023); Emily Hilliard -- Making Our Future (2022); bell hooks -- Belonging (1990); Lori Jakiela -- Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe (2016); Chuck Kinder -- Last Mountain Dancer (2018); Jeanne Marie Laskas -- Hidden America (2012); David McCullough -- The Johnstown Flood (1968); Beth Macy -- Dopesick (2018); Jeff Mann -- Loving Mountains, Loving Men (2023); Scott Reynolds Nelson -- John Henry, Steel Driving Man (2006); Dave Newman -- Same Dead Songs (2022); Matthew Newton -- Shopping Mall (2017); Jennifer Niesslein -- Dreadful Sorry (2022); S.L. Price -- Playing Through the Whistle (2016); Shawna Kay Rodenberg -- Kin (2022); Rob Ruck -- Sandlot Seasons (1987); William Serrin -- Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town (1993); Ed Simon -- An Alternative History of Pittsburgh (2021); Steven Stoll -- Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia (2018); Matt Stroud -- Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High Tech Policing (2019); Abraham Verghese -- My Own Country (1994); Mark Whitaker -- Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance (2018); Charles Dodd White -- A Year Without Months (2021); John Edgar Wideman -- Brothers and Keepers (1984); Jessica Wilkerson -- To Live Here You Have to Fight (2018); Damon Young -- What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker (2019)
Poetry
alphabetical by author
Maggie Anderson -- A Space Filled with Moving (1992), Windfall (2000); Jack Gilbert -- Collected Poems (2017); Crystal Good -- Valley Girl (2012); Kari Gunter-Seymour -- Alone in the House of My Heart (2022), A Place So Deep in America It Can't Be Seen (2020); Patricia Jabbeh Wesley -- Praise Song for My Children (2020); Lori Jakiela -- How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? (2022); Ashley M. Jones -- Magic City Gospel (2017); Mant¿s -- The Rootwork Stretched (2022); Louise McNeill -- Hill Daughter: New & Selected Poems (1991); Tina Mozelle Brazielle -- Known by Salt (2019); Dave Newman -- The Poetry Factory (2015); Ed Ochester -- Unreconstructed (2007); Sugar Run Road (2015); Muriel Rukeyser -- The Book of the Dead (1938); Fred Shaw -- Scraping Away (2020); Frank X Walker -- Affrilachia (2000); A Is for Affrilachia (2023); Crystal Wilkinson -- Perfect Black (2022)