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Savannah Sipple

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Neema Avashia

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Leigh Ann Henion

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Scott Blackburn

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Jessie van Eerden and Thorpe Moeckel

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 […]

Ricardo Nazario-Colón

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 […]

United States Poet Laureate (2012-2014) and Pulitzer Prize Winner Natasha Trethewey

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Nickole Brown

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Irina Zhorov

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

Photo by Sam BrownThis event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalNovelist Irina Zhorov was born in Uzbekistan, in the Soviet Union, and moved to Philadelphia on the eve of its dissolution. After failing to make use of a geology degree, she received an MFA from the University of Wyoming. Zhorov […]

Emily Nemens

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian Journal2023 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, Novelist and Editor Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, editor, and educator. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2020 and released in paperback by Picador in […]

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips and Matthew Wimberley

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

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 […]

Liz Robbins

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalPoet Liz Robbins' (she/her) third collection, Freaked, won the 2015 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award, judged by Bruce Bond; her second collection, Play Button, won the 2012 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith. Her first collection is Hope, As the […]

Keith Wilson

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalKeith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and […]

Kayla E.

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

photo credit: Sara MulveyThis event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalKayla E. is a Texas-born artist and designer of Mexican-American descent. Her comics practice centers around her childhood and functions as a map-making exercise. Leaning heavily on the fixed compositional structure and aesthetic codes of post-war American comics, she imposes […]

M. Soledad Caballero

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalThe Juanita Tobin Memorial Reading Soledad Caballero, professor of English and co-chair of the Women's Gender and Sexuality Program at Allegheny College, is a Macondo and CantoMundo fellow. Her poem “Some Day I Will Visit Hawk Mountain" was featured in May 2022 in […]

Jason Mott

Plemmons Student Union 201-B Plemmons Student Union

photo credit: Michael BeckerThis event is co-sponsored by The Schaefer Center Presents series and Appalachian JournalNew York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various […]