The Anthology APPALACHIAN VOICE

There's a new anthology out called Appalachian Voice.

Book description: "Appalachian Voice is a thrilling and disarmingly honest collection of ten stories, featuring a linguistic mix of southern voices. Authors draw from personal experiences, rendering an amalgamation of universal themes—desire, split families, addiction, illness, war, and death—which offers an astute, thorough, and engaging view through storytellers singing with Appalachian inflection. Notable Appalachian authors include Laurie Jean Cannady, G. C. Compton, Dennis McHale, Deana Nantz, Shannon Ralph, Tom Sheehan, John Sparks, John Vanderslice, and Brian Wamsley."

Among the authors included is my uncle, G.C. Compton, three-time Plattner Award winner and three-time Kudzu Poetry Prize winner.  Please have a look and spread the word about this fine collection of work.

Pick it up here, good folks.

A Brief Reading Roundup

"What It's Really Like To Be An Alcoholic" by Jamie Iredell - Thought Catalog

"When you were young, people would gather at parties to watch you imbibe and exclaim, How does he keep on drinking without getting drunk or sick? This was your training ground. Later, you’ll visit Russia, the world’s drunkest country, where the men with whom you drink will tell your wife that in the future you can return to drink with them without your Russian-speaking wife to accompany you."

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"The novel is dead (this time it's for real)" by Will Self - The Guardian

"Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Simply because you've remarked a number of times on the concealed fox gnawing its way into your vitals, it doesn't mean it hasn't at this moment swallowed your gall bladder. Ours is an age in which omnipresent threats of imminent extinction are also part of the background noise – nuclear annihilation, terrorism, climate change. So we can be blinkered when it comes to tectonic cultural shifts. The omnipresent and deadly threat to the novel has been imminent now for a long time – getting on, I would say, for a century – and so it's become part of culture."

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"A Normal Interview with George Singleton" by Christina Hayes - The Normal School

"I try to have what seem to be stereotypical southern characters act in surprising and good-hearted ways, I suppose. Not so much that it’s beyond willful suspension of disbelief."