This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain James Gage Welcome to the Spring 2002 Appalachian Heritage. We are pleased, as always, to present to our readers the finest in poetry, scholarly articles, personal essays, short fiction, and reviews of literature from and about the Southern Appalachian Region. In this issue, we are proud to feature discussions prepared for the 2002 Appalachian Studies Conference in Helen, Georgia (by Professors Joyce Compton-Brown, Gina Herring and Marianne Worthington), regarding the work ofpoets Jeanne Bryner, Llewellyn McKernan, Linda Parsons Marion, Edwina Pendarvis and Lynn Powell. These five poets have, in turn, generously offered Appalachian Heritage readers previously unpublished poetry. These, along with other new poems, essays and short fiction from throughout the region make this a particularly rich gathering of original Appalachian literature. We are pleased as well to announce in this issue the winners of the prestigious 2001 Denny C. PlattnerAppalachian Heritage Awards for excellence in writing. These prizes,awarded through the generosity of longtime supporters Kenneth and Elisa Plattner, of Camp Springs, Kentucky, have allowed us to thank our writers for their distinguished contributions to you, the readers of Southern Appalachian literary magazine. ...