WV authors

We are all signed up in this group because we are from (or have ties to) the Mountain State. I would expect that means we have other things in common, including appreciation of works by authors who are themselves from WV. Let's name our favorite WV authors. I think it is likely each of us will discover new authors we were not aware of, that we might have a predisposition to enjoy, simply because of our common ground, and all that implies. I suppose that books like "Chuck Yeager: Autobiography" would technically qualify, but that is not what I really have in mind. I'll start it off: Homer Hickam. Pearl Buck. And 3 from my hometown of Buckhannon: Steve Coonts, Maggie Anderson, Jayne Anne Phillips. Ok, raise my awareness level - name some more.

Ann Pancake, Pinckey Benedict, Davis Grubb

Cynthia Rylant.
I met Davis Grubb when I was 17, working at S. Spencer Moores. He had a taxi wait for him, and he ran in wearing pajamas and a headband, grabbed a ream of paper and yelled "Put it on my account". I had no idea who he was, and was panicked. My boss, Andy Truslow started laughing and told me who he was.

Don't forget Mary Lee Settle Her series of Beaulah Land novels about the early history of West Virginia are classic. I'm not from West Virginia but have family from Kentucky. Actually, I think they did a bit of feuding back & forth.

OK, I forget their names, but the two brothers, who won the Liars Contest many times. One of them died, and the other was used to be a Methodist Minister. There are several collections of their tall tales.

The Liars are Bil Lepp and Paul Lepp. Paul is now deceased, but Bil is still lying.

David Park Barnitz and Breece D'J Pancake, by god.

Denise Giardina was born in Bluefield, and has written several books where West Virginia is featured prominently. (I'm just about to start Storming Heaven.)

#8 Storming Heaven is fantastic. It was actually required reading for a college class I had years ago. I don't remember which class though.

Lauren Carr (Joshua Thornton mysteries) and Judi Strider (historical romance writer) are both from the Eastern Panhandle.

Russ McDaniel is my favorite West Virginian author. I can honestly say I've tried Denise Giardina and found her work very slow going. Pearl Buck doesn't top my list, but she's a pleasant way to spend an evening.

Personally I like Eric Flint's 1632 about a West Virginia town transplanted into the Thirty Years War. The sequels are largely done by other people and I care less for them, but I really liked the first book.

I loved the story about Davis Grubb - I'll have to find his books now.
Check this list:
www.mountainlit.com/ceturyauthos.htm
Some surprises here.

Homer Hickham is an amazing writer, he's classicly literate.
Allen Appel's time travel novels Time After Time are very good. He grew up on my block in Parkersburg. His mother and I drink scotch together.

I too enjoyed 1632, but that should begin another thread - West Virginia as setting. Loved it that they took a coal mine and a power station into the past with them.

Came here to add Breece D'J Pancake, but I see that's been done, so I'll add Jason Headley.

Wow, what happened to the WV boards? I'm going to try to revive it & see what happens.

Hello, everybody! I'm from Spencer, WV. Any other mountaineers in here?

Parkersburg here, and I work in Ripley.

Capon Bridge, but originally from Shepherdstwon

New Martinsville, WV, originally from out of state

As to the late great Davis Grubb, when my wife knew him, he called himself Davison Grubb, though was pretty-well reconciled to other persons' getting it wrong. What a character! In later year he dealt with alcoholism by chain-smoking pot, often casually rolling a joint in public places. Since he was a celebrity, he usually got away with it. You can imagine how that went over at Women's Clubs when he gave readings, as he often did.

David Alan Corbin for me. Though he's only written one book, it is, I think, the best book about the mine wars.

And I'm in Charleston.

Randolph S. Stewart, author, ('Akatiel: Angel In Time' & anthology 'Now You See Him', Amazon) Wheeling area.
My favorite WV writer is Wheeling's Poet Emeritus, Randy Keener, poet & songwriter.

Julia Keller is a West Virginia native from Huntington. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed her Bell Elkins series is set in a fictional WV town/county. Patricia Harman was not born in West Virginia, but she's lived here for quite some time and she's written a few memoirs about being a midwife as well as a fictional series about midwives set in West Virginia.

Just touchstoning here

Julia Keller

Patricia Harman

My boss gave me a 2019 calendar published by The Culture Center in Charleston. It features 13 literary locations and 13 West Virginia authors.

I decided it was time for me to pay closer attention to the written materials within.

January's photo is an interior view of St. John's Episcopal Church in Point Pleasant, WV. A funeral is described there in Black for Remembrance. Carlene Thompson lives in Point Pleasant and often uses WV locations for her books.

The mini-bio provided on her says in part: "Carlene Thompson was born in Parkersburg and grew up between West Virginia and Ohio."

What does that bring to mind for you locals?

February's photo is an exterior of the Piedmont Public Library, in Piedmont, WV. The Mt. Carbon Masonic Lodge put the building up in the early 1900s, with the lodge on the third floor. The first floor was designed as retail space and contained clothing and candy stores. The library began renting the ground floor in the 1960s and bought the building in 1996.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born in Keyser and raised in Piedmont. He is an historian and Harvard professor and has written 16 books on the African-American experience.

There is a quote from Colored People: A Memoir about his first experience reading non-fluff books, pushed by his teacher, Mrs. Iverson.

March has a long shot of Waterford Park race track in the northern panhandle. It's now named Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort.

Jaimy Gordonspent several seasons as a groom and "hot walker" at the tracks in Charles Town, in the eastern panhandle. The note says she has a sister in Wheeling and Jaimy owns a summer home near there.

The quote describing a track is from Lord of Misrule.

April shows the reconstructed Prickett's Fort, near Fairmont and quotes A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier by Robert Thompson-(18).

Thompson is a historian, but there is not a lot of author data in the calendar blurb or on LT yet. I might try to remedy that.

What a nice calendar to have! I've tended to read more non-fiction by West Virginians (the mine wars are a special interest of mine) than fiction and have been trying to remedy that. Hoping to get to Mary Lee Settle next.

Hey Meredith! Glad to know someone is reading the posts.

I was just down your way. Met daughter for dinner at the China Buffet last week. She's moved to Ohio, but was back for an appointment.

May's photo has very little to do with the author or the quote. It was probably just a nice picture they wanted to include. It's a nice summer view of the house and grounds of the historic Colonel James Graham House in Lowell, Summers County.

The quote is about going swimming in the local swimming hole where "we sometimes saw snakes, but we jumped in anyway." When I Was Young in the Mountains, by Cynthia Rylant.

I couldn't find any connection between Rylant and Summers County. Wikipedia says she was born in Hopewell, WV and there are 4 communities by that name, but none in Summers County. She spent a chunk of her childhood in Raleigh County (memorialized in her poetry book Waiting to Waltz), which is near Summers County.

I've just been re-visiting some of her writings, as a side aspect of reviewing the illustrator, Stephen Gammell's work. He illustrated Waiting to Waltz, and he did a whole lot of other Appalachian stories for other authors, too. One of the most iconic of the set is another of Rylant's - The Relatives Came. I love it!

It's a nice way to be down! Or would be if it hadn't been 94 degrees every day for the last two weeks with no rain to speak of...

I was never much of a fan of Rylant's middle grade novels, but I do like her picture books. I had to work a booth at the WV book festival for a few years (for Taylor Books) and we'd get authors stopping by to give us gossip about other WV authors. The ones who wrote children's books were always the gossipers!

I recall Missing May fondly, but yeah, agree about the rest.

June's photo is the John Nash house in Bluefield, WV. That is John Forbes Nash Jr., famously depicted in Sylvia Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind. As Nasar describes it, it is indeed a modest home, built partly of cinder blocks that John Sr. bought "for a song from a nearby Appalachian Coal processing plant."

I like that the calendar editors included this one. It is not at all scenic or romantic, but solidly exemplifies suburban West Virginia.

July's photo is of the Brock Hotel in Summersville, Nicholas County. It quotes from Ann Pancake's Strange as this Weather Has Been. The Brock Hotel has been a private residence since 1914, but before that had 21 guest rooms and sits next to the Weston & Gauley Bridge Turnpike. In Pancake's novel, set in the present, one of her characters works at a motel that houses out of town miners working coal removal by the mountaintop removal method.

Ann Pancake grew up in that part of the state.

August features the exterior of the Z. D. Ramsdell House in Ceredo, Wayne County. James Casto taught English and journalism at Marshall University, and has written several local history books. Highway to History features the Midland Trail, aka US Rt. 60, which passes through Ceredo.

September is a view (not a particularly interesting one) of the old Mullins Farm in Clay County. Clay County, just northeast of the capital, is where the Mullins brothers discovered an apple tree burdened with a great crop of yellow apples. They sent a few to Paul Stark, one of the Stark Brothers. Paul came to examine and buy the tree, and marketed it as Golden Delicious. Anna Egan Smucker writes the story in Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story.

Smucker is a librarian and educator. She says Cynthia Rylant inspired her to try her own hand at writing stories.

I will finish that calendar at some point, but it's not to hand today.

I'm moving piles of books and papers, trying to pretend to spring clean.

My husband's family are from Harrison and Doddridge Counties. I inherited the entire book collection when my MIL died, because nobody else was interested. They are tagged 'Engle-Pease collection' in my catalog.

Today I came across Hortense: the romance of a year: A temperance novel Inside I found the author's calling card ~ "Mrs. B. M. Pollock, Fairmont, W.Va. Note change of address"

I can't find anything online about her except a passing mention in an old WV history by Callahan.

Her preface lists Morgantown, W.Va., but nothing else of a personal nature. The frontispiece has a lovely portrait of her which I will try to scan at some point.

Temperance novels were a particular sub-genre of the times, often written by clergy and published by religious groups. The publisher here is Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va. So probably self published and self marketed. The calling card has $1.00 written in pencil in the corner.

Hello everyone, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Whitney Metz, and I have lived in West Virginia my entire life. I recently published my first novel. It's called Sigils & Secrets and is the first in my Black Magick series.

>40 WhitneyMetz:. Welcome Whitney! Glad you found your way over here. What parts of West Virginia do you hang out in?

October’s photo features an empty cavernous hall of the old and vacant Staats Hospital in the Elk City Historic District of west side Charleston. There is a ghostly saxophone player in the foreground. The building was originally built for the Knights of Pythias in 1922, and hosted many jazz musicians.
Christopher Wilkinson wrote Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, published in 2012. Wilkinson is a professor at the WVU School of Music.

Media Farm, near Charles Town, is featured on November’s page. Julia Davis’ mother grew up there and Julia spent summers there. She became an AP reporter in the 1920s and wrote more than 2 dozen books. Appears Legacy of Love was autobiographical. Her quote from that is “For the child I was, Media meant joy and freedom…”
The structure is a sizable rambling farmhouse, probably not the main home, but another built for female workers during WW1.

Her father started out teaching at Media Farm as a young man, where he met her mother. He went on to a prestigious career as an ambassador to England and a presidential candidate.

Granville Davisson Hall was primarily a reporter in Wheeling, and recorded the proceedings of the Wheeling Conventions, on the formation of the state of West Virginia; later writing The Rending of Virginia, as well as other titles. The book referenced is Daughter of the Elm, and the description is of a two story log home. The December photo is of the hearth area of the Levi Shinn House, near Clarksburg. It probably has no actual connection with the story.

Bonus photo is of the interior of the Tucker County jail, featuring a steel and concrete cell. This is probably not the cell that Col. Robert Eastham escaped from in 1898. The book is The Industrialist and the Mountaineer. The author is WVU history professor, Ronald L. Lewis.