Schaefer Center Presents Cosponsored Events

Photo by Rebecca Dayle AshbyThis event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series Poet Savannah Sipple is the author of WWJD & Other Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), which was included on the American Library Association's Over the Rainbow Recommended LGBTQ Reading List. It explores what it is to be a […]

This event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series When memoirist Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving: “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood […]

This event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series Environmental writer and 2022 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Leigh Ann Henion is the New York Times bestselling author of Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World. The book is about how she chased eclipses, migrations, and other natural […]

photo by Ross Fletcher GordonThis event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series Crime novelist Scott Blackburn is an English instructor and a 2017 graduate of the Mountainview MFA program of Southern New Hampshire University. He lives in High Point, North Carolina, with his wife and two children. When he is […]

This event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series Novelist Jessie van Eerden and Poet Thorpe MoeckelA West Virginia native, Jessie van Eerden holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham […]

This event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series 2023 Juanita Tobin Memorial Reading Dr. Ricardo Nazario-Colón was born in the South Bronx, New York City, and raised in the Highlands of Puerto Rico. He lives in the Appalachian region of North Carolina, where he works as the inaugural Chief Diversity […]

This event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents series Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). In his citation, Librarian of Congress James Billington wrote, “Her poems dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a […]

photo by Joli LivaudaisThis event is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal and The Schaefer Center Presents seriesPoet Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for 10 years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was […]

This event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalASHLEIGH BRYANT PHILLIPS is from Woodland, North Carolina. Her debut short story collection, Sleepovers, won the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Award. Sleepovers was called "elegant and mesmerizing" by the New Yorker and "blunt and life-affirming" by Publisher's Weekly. Stories from it appear in […]