Summary

Fidelities is Valerie Nieman's first collection of short stories. The stories in Fidelities, which are mostly set in West Virginia, are both heartrending and beautiful.

Contents

• Worth
• Delivering the Message
• Something Like Delilah
• Himself
• Knockdown
• Where Happiness is Expected
• Flesh and Blood
• Be an Angel
• Westgate
• May Apple
• Learning to Draw with Perspective
• Edges
• Act of Grace
• Pas de Deux
• Housecleaning
• Trout
• Control
• Crunch

Author

Valerie Nieman attended Jamestown Community College in her hometown in western New York for only a year before enrolling at West Virginia University where she completed a BS in journalism. After graduation she stayed in her adopted state working as a full-time journalist while pursuing her own writing career. After leaving her imprint on West Virginia, Nieman became the Rockingham County editor of the North Carolina Greensboro News & Record.

Nieman published her first novel, Neena Gathering, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, in 1988. She has also published two poetry chapbooks, Slipping out of Old Eve and How We Live. Her second fictional work, Survivors, was published in 2000. She has also published two poetry chapbooks, Slipping out of Old Eve and How We Live, and a full-length poetry collection, Wake Wake Wake. Her second novel, Survivors, was published in 2000. Her third novel, Blood Clay, will be published in March by Press 53. Her poetry has appeared recently in the Southern Poetry Review, Connotations Press: An Online Artifact, Still, North Carolina Literary Review, ABZ, and Crab Creek Review. Her short story "Worth" appeared in the 2010 anthology Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia.

Reviews

"Nieman's creation of each character and her evocation of time and place are unique... [her characters] are so real that I feel I know them all."
Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, author On Long Mountain

"No matter where you open Fidelities. . . it's full of intriguing people [and] interesting puzzles that leave the reader wondering about their complexities long after reading it."
Jennifer Lynch, Graffiti

Summary

"The connection is not so much in mutual influence, though there is some of that, but in each writer’s total immersion in place. Even those writers who no longer live in the state remember the feel, the physical texture, the overwhelming and enfolding vegetal surround of the place." 
Irene McKinney, West Virginia Poet Laureate

This is as closely-knit an anthology as you are ever likely to see. It is as though a large, extended family were drawing on the same store of family stories, jokes, symbols, landscapes, animals, trees, language, and vernacular. How many snakes are in this book? How many foxes, possums? Fossils? And how very many coal mines? But it is not merely local references that unites these writers. There is a larger vision that ties these works together.

ForeWord Magazine Finalist

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Maggie Anderson
  • Marginal
  • Independence Day, TerraAlta, West Virginia 1935
  • Among Elms and Maples, Morgantown, West Virginia, August 1935
  • Mining Camp Residents, West Virginia, July, 1935
  • Spitting in the Leaves
  • Long Story
  • Ontological
• Mary Lee Settle
  • From Addie: A Memior
• Mark DeFoe
  • Late Winter Snow: South of Morgantown, WV
  • Leaving the Hills
  • Driving the Gauley River, Listening to the Radio
  • The Former Miner Returns from His First Day as a Service Worker
  • Air
• Pinckney Benedict
  • The Sutton Pie Safe
  • Odom
• Tom Andrews
  • Hymning the Kanawha
  • Evening Song
• Lisa Roger
  • Extended Learning
• Louise McNeill
  • Memoria
  • The Roads
  • Granny Saunders
  • The Long Traveller
  • The Road
  • The River
• Meredith Sue Willis
  • Family Knots
• Timothy Russell
  • In Dubio
  • In Aegri Somnia
  • In Consideratione Praemissorum
  • In Actu
• Lee Maynard
  • From Crum
• Llewellyn McKernan
  • Aunt Anna
  • The Peaceful Kingdom
  • The Only Old Timer in the Neighborhood
  • In Spring
• Denise Giardina
  • Rondal Lloyd
• Davis Grubb
  • The Burlap Bag
• AE Stringer
  • Ruins in Reverse
  • Listen
  • My Friend Told Me
• Richard Currey
  • The Wars of Heaven
• John McKernan
  • On the Edge of Highway 10 North
• Breece D'j Pancake
  • Trilobites
  • Fox Hunters
• Victor Depta
  • The Mad Whore of Peachtree
  • It Didn't Come from Hallmark
  • When Your Ego Bloats
  • Charlenes Ex
• Ann Pancake
  • Jolo
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr
  • Sin Boldly
• Irene McKinney
  • Twilight in West Virginia: Six 0'Clock Mine Report
  • Deep Mining
  • Visiting my Gravesite: Talbott Churchyard, West Virginia
  • Fodder
  • For Women Who Have Been PatientAll Their Lives
  • Viridian Days
• Jayne Anne Phillips
  • Cheers
  • Bess
• Louise McNeill
  • A Patch of Earth
  • Night At The Commodore
• About the Contributors

Author

This anthology of contemporary fiction and poetry from West Virginia writers titled Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia is edited by our state’s poet laureate, Irene McKinney. It features a wealth of fiction and poetry by some of the best writers in West Virginia over the last half century. More of West Virginia’s writers will be featured in future collections of contemporary writing published by the WVU Press.

The authors included in Backcountry are Maggie Anderson, Tom Andrews, Pinckney Benedict, Richard Currey, Mark DeFoe, Victor Depta, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Denise Giardina, Davis Grubb, Lisa Koger, Lee Maynard, Llewellyn McKernan, John McKernan, Irene McKinney, Louis McNeill, Ann Pancake, Breece D’J Pancake, Jayne Anne Phillips, Timothy Russell, Mary Lee Settle, A. E. Stringer, and Meredith Sue Willis.

Reviews

"With collected works, there's always a temptation to look for the common vein. If such a thread exists, it lies in the impression, the imprint, that West Virginia has shaped. From start to finish (still the best way to read a book), this compilation holds its images; and a careful arrangement of the selections leaves the reader rocking between poetic and concrete high notes. Editor Irene McKinney, whose writing competes with all the rest, has assembled a marvelous vision of West Virginia."
Cyns Nelson, The Bloomsbury Review

"...a wonderful collection."
Paul Nyden, The Charleston Gazette

"An exemplary anthology of regional writing."
Appalachian Heritage

Summary

Tess, a West Virginian in New York City, finds herself among seedy brothels facing life as a prostitute. A number of trials test her in every way, leading to both understanding and misunderstanding among her friends and her family. Tess tells these stories of pain, joy, depression, loneliness, and endurance in her journal, and they will shock some readers and charm others. With the shadow of the Appalachians calling her back home, she desperately struggles to claim her individuality in a world of debauchery without the painful remnants of her past and fear of a fragmented future overwhelming her.

Author

Priscilla A. Rodd was born outside of Paw Paw, West Virginia, in an old farmhouse without running water or electricity. Her parents, who were Quaker activists, homeschooled Priscilla until she was eleven years old. She began public school the same year her family acquired indoor plumbing and a black-and-white television. Priscilla holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She currently teaches creative writing and lives in Charles Town, West Virginia, with her husband and fellow writer Deane Kern, and their two young sons.

Reviews

"Priscilla Rodd's protagonist in Surviving Mae West can be exasperating, like watching a friend engage in self-destructive behavior. Yet, we still care about her as she navigates between the two worlds of New York prostitution and her West Virginia family."
Denise Giardina, author Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth

"Tess and her brother grew up in a peaceful, rural West Virginia community. But one night after a high school party, a traumatic event changed their lives forever. In Priscilla Rodd's Surviving Mae West, a family struggles to overcome extraordinary loss. . . In exploring her heroine's character, Rodd ultimately penned some surprising lessons about sacrifice, growth, and deliverance."
Mary Zangrilli, Pitt Magazine

"Engaging, graphic, humorous, [and] often shocking."
Paul Nyden, Charleston Gazette-Mail

Summary

This contemporary novel takes place in two main settings: on a cruise ship and through flashbacks to the narrator’s fictional West Virginia hometown. The transitions from present to past are well done and help the reader see how a now-wealthy woman came to her current view of the world. It also shows why she has such difficulty handling her present crisis. This well-crafted story, told by an older woman, but filled with interesting characters of all ages from West Virginia and around the world, will appeal to the general fiction reader. However, residents of West Virginia will be particularly fascinated as the narrator’s story unfolds.

For more information about Meredith Sue Willis visit her web site at: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com.

Author

Meredith Sue Willis was born and raised in West Virginia and received most of her education in the town of Shinnston. After she spent two years at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, she spent some time as a Volunteer in Service to America in Norfolk, Virginia. After this time, she attended and graduated from Barnard College in New York City. A few years later she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Willis has received many awards and recognition for her writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Literary Award from the West Virginia Library Association. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.

Reviews

"The most extraordinary people are the seemingly ordinary ones. Simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, Oradell is one of the best, most fully drawn characters you'll every have the privilege of meeting."
Silas House, author Clay's Quilt

"Oradell at Sea is an entertaining, fast-paced book that pulls the reader in."
Sharon Hatfield, Journal of Appalachian Studies

Summary

In his debut short-fiction collection, The Way Things Always Happen Here, Kevin C. Stewart takes his readers to the scene of a heinous murder, to the home of an alcoholic single mother, to the 1960s election campaign of JFK through West Virginia, and off the side of the New River Gorge Bridge. In these eight stories set in fictional Oak County in southern West Virginia, and one novella set in the Arkansas Ozarks, Stewart gives us characters who all love and hate where they’re from.

ForeWord Award Finalist

Contents

• one mississippi
• the way things always happen here
• her
• sarah's story
• debts
• red dog
• june hay
• the pillar of william's grave
• margot

Author

Among other awards, Kevin C. Stewart won the Texas Review Novella Prize for a short story entitled Margot, which is featured in this book. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, along with degrees in English, architecture, and civil engineering. He currently serves as a professor of English and Creative Writing at Carroll College in Montana.

Reviews

"These stories of hard realities and painfully won wisdom are absolutely jam-packed with those simmering, guarded secrets and dark desires we all share."
Chuck Kinder, author Snakehunter and Last Mountain Dancer

"Raw beauty is the heart of this collection where hope and despair mingle, where the mountains shelter and confine. Stewart renders this struggle and beauty in these stories that capture in fiction our many hard truths."
Jim Minick, Journal of Appalachian Studies

Summary

Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians, by the renowned West Virginia folklorist and former West Virginia University English professor Patrick W. Gainer, not only highlights stories that both amuse and raise goosebumps, but also begins with a description of the people and culture of the state. Based on material Gainer collected from over fifty years of field research in West Virginia and the region, Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians presents the rich heritage of the southern Appalachians in a way that has never been equaled. Strange and supernatural tales of ghosts, witches, hauntings, disappearances, and unexplained murders that have been passed down from generation to generation from as far back as the earliest settlers in the region are included in this collection that will send chills down the spine.

Contents

• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Speech of the Mountaineers
  • Dialect and Accent
  • Words and Expressions
  • Traditional Activities and Customs
    • The Molasses Boiling
    • Bean Stringings and Apple Peelings
    • The Corn Shuckin’
    • Wheat-threshing Time
    • The Quilting Bee
    • The “Literary”
    • Box Suppers and Pie Socials
    • The Singing School
    • Halloween
    • Christmas
    • Wakes
    • Play Parties
    • The Big Meetin’
    • Serenade for Newlyweds
    • The Infare
    • The Party Line
  • Ghostlore
    • Jim Barton’s Fiddle
    • The Ghost of Mrs. Green
    • The Woman Who Came Crying
    • The Passing Soul
    • The Ghost of the Jilted Girl
    • The Vengeful Ghost of the Murdered Girl
    • The Ghost of the Peddler on Third Run
    • The Collins Betts Peddler
    • The Crying Infant
    • The Headless Horseman of Powell Mountain
    • The Shue Murder Case
    • The Tragic Story of Ellen and Edward
    • The Lover’s Ghost
    • A Haunted House
    • The Poltergeist of Petersburg
    • The Mother-in-Law’s Revenge
    • The Ghost Rider
    • The Ghost Rides With Her Lover
    • The Dog Ghost of Peach Tree
    • The Hitch-hiker
    • The Phantom Wagon
    • Add’s Image
    • The Graveyard Ghost
    • The Peddler’s Ghost of Maysville
    • The Ghosts of Echo Rock
    • Three Headless Ghosts
    • The White Bird
    • The Ghost of the Murdered Storekeeper
    • The Ghost of the Mistreated Husband
    • The Peddler’s Ghost of Pendleton County
    • The Old Haunted House of Nicholas County
    • A Mysterious Disappearance
    • The Fireside Ghost
    • The Chain
    • The Haunted House at Renick
    • The Stroop House Ghost
    • The Informing Revenant
    • A Ghost Returns for His Head
    • The Woman in White
    • The Headless Rider of Spruce Lick
    • The Headless Horseman of Braxton County
    • The Ghost of Sally Robinson
    • The Crying Baby
    • The Ghost of the Card Player
    • An Errant Husband is Disciplined
    • The Walking Ghost
    • The Ghost of the Crites Mountain Schoolhouse
    • The Hidden Treasure of Bear Fork
  • Wizard Clip
  • Folk Cures
  • Nature Lore and Rules for Farming
  • Superstitions
  • Witchcraft
    • The White Art
    • Uncle Johnnie Bewitches the Cows
    • Uncle Johnnie Frightens Mrs. Dickens
    • Death and Burial of Uncle Johnnie
    • The Black Cat Murders
    • The Witch of Booger Hole
    • The Sad Death of Mary Fisher
    • The Witch Doctor’s Silver Bullet
    • The Violent Witch
    • The Witch of Buck Run
    • The Witchery of Mary Leadum
    • The Mysterious Doe
    • A Witch’s Spell Taken Off
    • The Raccoon Witch
    • The Witch’s Funeral
    • The Bewitched Pigs
    • The Witch of Bull Run Meets Her Match
    • The Witch Man of Calhoun County
    • The Devil Takes His Victim
    • How Witches Got Milk and Butter
    • The Milk Witch of Wood County
    • The Gilmer County Witch Plays a Trick
    • The Black Cat is Beaten
    • Another Way to Break a Spell
    • How to Kill a Witch
    • White Bear
    • A Young Man Fixes the Witch of Bull Run
    • Recollections of Witchcraft
  • Appendix

Reviews

"Since the material in this book has come from the traditions of the people who live among the hills and mountains of West Virginia, people who are proud to be called mountaineers, I feel that it is important to tell something about these people whose ancestors chose as the motto of their state, Mountaineers Are Always Free."
Patrick W. Gainer

Summary

Cancer Stories: Lessons in Love, Loss, and Hope gives a personal, in-depth look at people battling cancer and the friends and relatives who care for them. This book offers a poignant look at their lives and the effect that cancer has on them. Cancer Stories was the result of the Cancer Project sponsored by the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University where journalism students were paired up with cancer patients in order to learn about their experiences. The large format book contains a series of photo essays and stories written in a narrative, highly accessible style. It is a must read for anyone interested in how cancer patients and their friends and relatives are able to find wonder and hope in one of life's most trying ordeals. Also included is a DVD of the award-winning documentary that inspired the book.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
    Christrine Martin
• Introduction
    Jennifer Roush
• He Keeps Going
    Grant Smith, photographs by Melissa Nethken
• Reconstruction
    Ivy Smith, photographs by Lingbing Hang
• As the Legacy Descends
    Jennifer Roush, photographs by Karina Gomes Dick
• Vernon M. Knode III
    Eunice Rohrere
• Banana Bread
    Jan Lauren Boyels, photographs by Barbara Griffin
• The Junction
    Katie Stout
• Remission
    Kelly Carr, photographs by Barbara Griffin and Melissa Nethken
• Stubborn Enough
    Pam Kasey, photographs by Courtney Balestier
• Listening for Cancer Stories
    David G. Allen

Author

John Temple and Joel Beeson are Assistant Professors of Journalism at the The Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University. Temple teaches news and feature-writing courses and heads the News-Editorial sequence. He is a creative nonfiction author and a former staff writer for the Tampa Tribune. Beeson's specialty area is visual journalism. He has an MA from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and is doing doctoral work on social documentary and new media with marginalized communities.

Reviews

"Cancer Stories is a truly collaborative project, bringing together journalism students, cancer patients, physicians, nurses, and other health care providers. It provides an accurate, honest and occasionally heartbreaking look at what it means to have cancer."
Dr. Eddie Reed, former director, Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center

Summary

This autobiography follows West Virginia senator Robert C. Byrd’s experiences from his boyhood in the early 1920s to his election in 2000, which won him an unprecedented eighth term in the Senate. Within these pages, Senator Byrd offers commentary on national and international events that occurred throughout his long life in public service. 

His journey from the hardscrabble coalfields to the marbled halls of Congress has inspired generations of people in West Virginia and throughout the nation. From reading the stories of the Founding Fathers as a young boy by the light of a kerosene lamp to the swearing of an oath for more than a half-century to guard the US Constitution, Senator Byrd’s life is legendary. 

Until his death on June 28, 2010, Byrd stood by his principles, earning the affection of the people of his home state and the respect of Americans from all walks of life. With his beloved Erma ever by his side, Robert C. Byrd never forgot his roots, harkening back to those early lessons that he learned as a child of the Appalachian coalfields.

This new paperback edition includes a foreword by Gaston Caperton, governor of West Virginia from 1989–1997.

Contents

1. Foreword by Gaston Caperton
2. Child of the Appalachian Coalfields
3. The Depression Years
4. A Political Career Begins
5. Mr. Byrd Goes to Washington
6. Around the World in Sixty-Six Days
7. Excelsior!
8. The Sapling Grows Tall
9. Stormy Waters
10. Climbing the Leadership Ladder
11. A Visit to Russia
12. Muddy Waters
13. A Supreme Court Nomination?
14. Building West Virginia Piece by Piece
15. The Old Order Changeth
16. The Top Rung—Majority Leader (1977)
17. Second Fiddle
18. Back in the Saddle Again
19. Elected President Pro Tempore
20. A Hand on the Purse Strings
21. Building a New West Virginia
22. West Virginia on thr Go
23. Bits and Pieces
24. Building a 21st Century West Virginia
25. The Winds of Change
26. The Tide Ebbs
27. Full Circle
28. The Return of the Native
29. Dribs and Drabs
30. Line-Item Veto Struck Down
31. In the Heat of Battle
32. Semper Fidelis
33. Afterword

Reviews

"Isn't this the true American story for this century? A complete turnabout in one's life raised in Crabtree, West Virginia in an environment of racism. This story is a complete compilation of someone overcoming that old battle of nature vs. nurture."
Ryan Swanek

"For those who want a personal and in-depth account of the senator's life and career, this book is essential reading."
Goldenseal

Summary

Blanche Lazzell went from Maidsville, West Virginia to the leading edge of twentieth-century American art. A member of the prominent art communities of Paris and Provincetown, Massachusetts during the '20s and '30s, Lazzell was always on the fringe of important developments in the modern art world. Her studies in Paris led her to adopt the techniques of modernism as well as other emerging styles. Among her groundbreaking works were some of the first examples of abstraction in America. Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist is a significant contribution to the history of twentieth-century American art.

Know primarily as a Provincetown printmaker, Lazzell’s full life and career are presented here, generously accompanied by color reproductions of her work, showing the breadth of her accomplishment in painting, printmaking, and hooked rugs. Lazzell's true contribution to American art history was never fully appreciated during her lifetime. A renewed interest in the artist has developed over past decades, due mostly to the critical appreciation of her color wood block prints. She is worth remembering not only for her own work, but also for her role as a translator of the achievements of the European modernists for her colleagues in America. In Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist, nine essays and hundreds of full-color illustrations bring this incredibly talented and influential artist's work to life.

Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
    Robert Bridges
• Chapter 1: Blanche Lazzell Biography
    Susan M. Doll
• Chapter 2: Art Studies in America at the Begining of the Twentieth Century
    Bernard Schultz and Kari Graham Reckart
• Chapter 3: The Decorative Work
    Lynn Proden
• Chapter 4: A Modernist's GRand Tour
    Michael Slaven
• Chapter 5: Studies in France, 1912—13
    Mary Louise Soldo Schultz
• Chapter 6: The Provincetown Print
    David Acton
• Chapter 7: Studying with Albert Glezes in 1924
    Peter Brooke
• Chapter 8: The Federal Arts Projects, 1934—39
    Marlene Park
• Chapter 9: Walls and Windows: Drawings and Paintings
    Jennifer Boggess
• Plates
• Chonology
• Contributers
• Index

Author

Robert C. Bridges is curator of both the West Virginia University Art Collection and Mesaros Galleries, where he teaches curatorial studies. He has an M.F.A. in printmaking from West Virginia University. He is curator of Blanche Lazzell: The Work of an American Modernist (2004) and co-curator of Blanche Lazzell: The Hoffman Drawings (2004).

Kristina Olson is an assistant professor of art history at West Virginia University. She has an M.A. in contemporary art criticism and history from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her teaching and research are in the fields of modern and contemporary art and architecture. She curated Frozen Architecture (2003) and is co-curator of Blanche Lazzell: The Hoffman Drawings (2004).

Janet Snyder is associate professor of art history at West Virginia University. She holds an M.F.A. in design for theater from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in art history from Columbia University, where her fields were Gothic art and architecture and Native North American art. She co-edited Medieval Textiles and Dress: Object, Image, and Text (2003).

Reviews

"This book will be essential for studies of modernism, as well as for art libraries and serious collectors of American art."
Joann G. Moser, Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum and author Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America

"A fascinating, detailed story of an artist's life... perhaps the definitive account of [Blanche Lazzell's] life and the significance of her career."
Anne Price, The Sunday Advocate

"A tribute to a singular talent that is as distinctive and multi-faced as her work."
Dale Blaine, ForeWord Magazine

"With wonderful illustrations and a helpful chronology, this is an interesting, important book."
R. M. Labuz, Choice Magazine

"Magnificent."
George Brosi, Appalachian Heritage

"A beautiful book."
R.K. Dickson, The Bloomsbury Review

"This monograph should serve as a wake-up call: there are a lot of excellent artists - particularly women artists - still being ignored, eclipsed by lesser, more colorful ones, in large part because they suffer the common fate of being discretely modest."
Mary Sherman, Journal of Appalachian Studies

Summary

Kartoon Kings is the first monographic and comprehensive analysis of the graphic artwork of Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio. This work showcases a collection of full-color images excerpted from comic book projects, videos, billboards, and more of the artists’ collaborative public contributions created over the past fifteen years. To supplement the images an interview with the artists by Kristina Olson is included, along with essays by Joshua Decter and Paul Krainak. Grennan and Sperandio work together by conspiring about their creative ideas on the Internet. Their teamwork must be done this way because Grennan lives in England, while Sperandio lives in the United States.

More of Sperandio and Grennan’s work can be seen at www.kartoonkings.com.

Author

Christopher Sperandio was born in Kingwood, West Virginia and studied art at West Virginia University and painting at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Simon Grennan was born in London, England and studied sculpture at the University of Reading and the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Reviews

"Mr. Grennan and Mr. Sperandio tweak our notion of what art is and who it is for."
Roberta Smith, The New York Times