Editor's Note

Change: it's something we confront, and it's something we carry with us, in our pockets, inside us. Although the notion of change arguably appears to varying degrees in nearly every piece of prose, it is especially present in the fiction and creative nonfiction we have collected in this issue of Appalachian Review.

The theme even lends itself to the title of Gavin Colton's "Little Piles of Change," a tender short story set in Ireland with themes that reverberate throughout Appalachian culture. A working-class man is struggling to keep his family financially and emotionally afloat while navigating the changes brought about by mid-life. His wife has lost her job; his kids are growing up, their tastes evolving. Time is moving, ever so fast, and he himself feels different. How will he manage?

Christopher Labaza's "Kingsnake" shows a young man at a different kind of turning point. Pearl wants more than his meager circumstances will allow. Responsibility has come too early. He is holding his family together, while attending college and working a job that has opened him up to exploitation.

In her essay "Drought Conditions: Personal Accounts from the 2016 Gatlinburg Wildfires," Jacquelyn Scott has assembled a collage of voices that include survivors to media reports, providing an emotional, harrowing look at the tragedy and its devastating aftermath. "I will never be the same in the weirdest little ways," one survivor muses, and as the narrative unfolds, it is clear that Scott herself has been changed as well. For this is her story too—she places her own experiences in conversation with the survivors' narratives, creating a history that is at once collective and deeply personal.

For his part, Michael Dowdy refuses to shy away from the personal in "Tiny Towns," a lyric essay that takes a bracing, honest, complex look at a slice of his family's history. Through memorable imagery, language, and connections, Dowdy reaches beyond the self to link his grandfather's business of restaurants and roadside inns to Arrested Development, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and the very notion of the American Dream.

Of course prose is not the only literary form found in this issue. We are proud to publish a suite of new poems from poet, translator, and teacher Jeremy Paden that will slice and heal you in equal measure. Jaycee Billington, Ace Englehart, David S. Higdon, Rebecca Lilly, Katy Luxem, and Adam Moore offer poems that reverberate with image and emotion, speaking to the senses, heart and intellect. Poetry, too, is the focus of this issue's interview. I was happy to chat with Marianne Worthington about her debut poetry collection The Girl Singer, which was recently spotlighted and recommended by the New York Times.

In closing, I want to acknowledge another change—the passing of the great critic, thinker, and writer bell hooks, whom we lost in December. bell's death is a particular blow to us at Appalachian Review. In addition to contributing to the magazine over the years, bell generously served as a member of our advisory board, offering expert guidance and indispensable advice even before the board was formally created. The reach of bell's work and life, of course, transcend this region and country; it's not an understatement to say that our world is much smaller, and much less thoughtful, without her. We will be paying proper tribute to bell in an upcoming issue, but in the meantime, please join us by keeping her memory alive—by being confronted, challenged, and changed by her work.