This Issue

We are pleased to bring you a magazine featuring the work of Karen Salyer McElmurray, a writer who has made a tremendous difference in the lives of many through her teaching and writing. Her memoir, Surrendered Child, has been helpful to many considering giving a child up for adoption or dealing with the feelings that accompany having done so years, even decades, ago. Her novels have delighted a legion of writers as well. Fortunately, we have both a memoir piece and a fiction fragment from Karen Salyer McElmurray to share with you in this issue. The Karen Salyer McElmurray section is fleshed out with a reflection on her work from Maurice Manning, on her teaching from Jason Howard, as well as an interview with Denton Loving and a biographical sketch.

Charles Dodd White has made an important contribution to regional literature as a co-editor of Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia, and we are happy to publish a short story from him in this issue. Our other story author is none other than Edgar Allan Poe! Robert Morgan provides a page to introduce his important contribution to regional literature.

This issue includes two very timely articles: the December 2010 Berea College Commencement Address of Helen Matthews Lewis and the testimony of Dwight B. Billings and Kate Black submitted to oppose a strip mining permit on Teges Creek in Clay County in a neighborhood studied for decades by James Brown, an important scholar. Billings is a sociologist whose work has follow up on Brown's scholarship, and Kate Black is the archivist who has organized and preserved Brown's scholarly work. We review two books: Amy Greene's novel, Bloodroot, which has just garnered the Weatherford Award as the outstanding work of Appalachian fiction in 2010, and An Appalachian Reawakening, an important non-fiction study of West Virginia after World War ii.

Our poets for this issue include some practitioners new to our magazine: David C. Hightower, Adrian Blevins, D. Antwan Stewart, and Laurence Holden, as well as old favorites, Charles Wright, David Huddle, Joseph Montgomery, Julie Dunlop and Cathryn Hankla.