MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Contributors to the new book Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (WVU Press, 2019) will discuss J.D. Vance’s controversial memoir of life in the region on February 25 from 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. in the Event Hall at WVU Law.
Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.
Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (Harper, 2016), has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. Appalachian Reckoning is a retort — rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful — to the long shadow Vance's book has cast over the region and its imagining. It also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy by allowing Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography.
For the discussion on Feb. 25, Appalachian Reckoning editors Anthony Harkins of Western Kentucky University and Meredith McCarroll of Bowdoin College will be joined by contributors Crystal Good, an Affrilachian poet, and photographer Roger May. Audra Slocum, WVU assistant professor of English Education, will moderate the conversation.
In Conversation: Appalachian Reckoning is sponsored by the WVU Humanities Center, WVU Law's Appalachian Justice Initiative, and West Virginia University Press.
-WVU-CONTACT: Abby Freeland, West Virginia University Press
304 916 7730, abby.freeland@mail.wvu.edu
