Publications and Selected Awards


Recent Publications
“In Such Light” - The Harvard Review, 46, Fall 2014
"Rockhounds" - Agni, Spring 2014
"Sab" - Chattahoochee Review, Fall/Winter 2013-14
"Creative Responses to Worlds Unraveling" - Georgia Review, Fall 2013
Books
- Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley - Novellas and Stories (Counterpoint Press, February 2015)
- Strange As This Weather Has Been (Novel, Counterpoint Press/ Shoemaker & Hoard, October 2007)
- Given Ground (Collection of short stories; The University Press of New England, 2001.) Order directly from UPNE Press.

Novel Excerpts
  • “Bant” - Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal Mining. Ed. Shirley Stewart Burns, Mari-Lynn Evans, and Silas House. Sierra Club Books, 2009.
  • “Upstream” - We All Live Downstream. Ed. Jason Howard. Louisville, KY: Motes Books, 2009. 183-185.
  •  “The End of the World in Slow Motion” - Narrative, Fall 2007.
  • “Pieces of God” - Kestrel, Spring 2007.
  • “Mogey" - Hunger Mountain ( Spring 2005): 58-70.
Short Stories
  • “Redneck Boys” - Grit Lit:  A Rough South Reader.  Ed. Tom Franklin and Brian Carpenter, Columbia, SC:  The University of South Carolina Press, 2012.  313-321.
  • “Mouseskull”  - The Georgia Review (Winter 2011): 691-710.
  • “Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley” - Water~Stone Review 13 (2010): 14-32.
  • “Arsonists” - New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2010. Ed. Amy Hempel, Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010. 163-180.
  • “Arsonists” - The Georgia Review (Summer 2009): 320-334.
  • “Said” - Chautauqua 4 (2008): 86-90.
  • “Dog Song.” The Surreal South. Ed. Pinckney and Laura Benedict, Winston-Salem, NC: Press 53. October 2007.
  • “Dog Song” Pushcart Prize XXIX, Best of the Small Presses. Ed. Bill Henderson, Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 2005. 94-114.
  • “Coop” Quarterly West 58 (Summer 2004): 101-105.
  • “Dog Song” New Stories from the South, the Best of 2004. Ed. Shannon Ravenel, Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004. 169-193.
  • “Dog Song” - Shenandoah 53.4 (Winter 2003): 5-26.
  • “Jolo” Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia. Ed. Irene McKinney, Morgantown, WV: WVU Press, 2002. 209-223.
  • “Redneck Boys” - Glimmer Train 39 (Summer 2001): 105-116.
  • “Bait” - The Southeast Review 21.1 (Spring 2001): 64-80.
  • “Crow Season” - Chattahoochee Review 21.2 (Winter 2001): 93-98.
  • “Dirt” - The Chariton Review 26.2 (Fall 2000): 21-25.
  • “Jolo” - Mid-American Review 21.1 (Fall 2000): 6-22.
  • “Revival” - Virginia Quarterly Review 76.4 (Autumn 2000): 713-720.
  • “Cash Crop: 1897" - The Massachusetts Review 40.1 (Spring 1999): 11-25.
  • “Tall Grass" - Shenandoah 47.4 (Winter 1997): 30-32.
  • “Sang" - Chattahoochee Review 16.2 (Spring 1996): 51-67.
  • “Ghostless" - Virginia Quarterly Review 71.2 (Spring 1995): 270-79.
  • “Sister" - Best of Wind. Ed. Steven R. Cope and Charlie G. Hughes. Lexington, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 1994: 186-93.
  • “Wappatomaka" - Antietam Review 14 (Spring 1994): 11-12.
  • “In the Territory" - Chaminade Literary Review 12-13 (1993): 140-46.
  • “Sister" - Wind 22.70 (1992): 54-61.
  • “Bearing Witness" - Hawaii-Pacific Review 4 (Spring 1989): 31-40.
  • “Getting Wood" - Antietam Review 9 (Spring 1989): 17-18.
  • “The Stillness in Stillness" - Poetic Space 4.6 (Spring 1989): 5-6.
Creative Nonfiction
  • “Our Own Kind” - Willow Springs 71, Winter 2013:  34-49.
  • “Capital Realism” - Short Takes: Brief Encounters With Contemporary Nonfiction. Ed. Judith Kitchen. W. W. Norton, 2005. 219-226.
  • “Tough” - New Millennium Writings. No. 14 (2004-2005): 133-144.
  • “Tough” - Five Points 7.3 (Summer 2003).
  • “Keeping Clean in Korat" - An Inn Near Kyoto. Ed. C.W. Truesdale and Kathleen Coskran, Minneapolis, Minnesota: New Rivers Press, 1998. 270-283.
  • “Keeping Clean in Korat" - International Quarterly 2.4 (Winter 1997): 43-56.
Poem
  • “Found Dogs” - Shenandoah.
Scholarly Articles
  • “‘Similar Outcroppings From the Same Strata’: The Synonymous Development Imagery of Appalachian Natives and Natural Resources” - The Journal of Appalachian Studies 6.1 & 2 (Spring/Fall 2000): 100-108.
  •  “’The Wheel’s Worst Illusion’: The Spatial Politics of Operation Wandering Soul” - Review of Contemporary Fiction 18.3 (Fall 1998): 72-83.
  •  “Story Time: Working-Class Women's Interventions in Literary Temporal Conventions" - Narrative 6.3 (October 1998): 292-306.
  •  “Taken By Storm: The Exploitation of Metaphor in the Persian Gulf Crisis" - Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8.4 (1993): 281-295.

Other
  • “Brushbreaker” - Appalachian Heritage, Summer 2012:  79-81.
  • Review of Oil on Water by Helon Habila.  Orion, September/October 2011: 75.
  • “Jacklighting Appalachia” - Grist Magazine, November 13, 2009, http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-13-jacklighting-appalachia/
  • “A Ruthless Elegance” - Orion, July/August 2009: 56-61.
  • “Reading How You’re Read: The Art of Evaluating Criticism” - Poets and Writers, May/June 2007.
  • “Virtual Hillbilly: Musings on JT LeRoy by a Flesh and Blood West Virginian” - Appalachian Heritage, Summer 2006: 35-45.
  • “Citizen Dustbusters Win One in Southern West Virginia” - Appalachian Voice, Spring 2003. 12-13.
  • “Kentucky High Schoolers Blast Mountaintop Removal” - Appalachian Voice, Summer, 2003. 9.

Selected Grants And Awards

 Nominated for The Stranger Genius Award
 Notable Mention in Best American Short Stories 2012 for “Mouseskull”
Notable Mention in Best American Short Stories 2010 for “Arsonists”
Thomas D. and Lily Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, 2010
Brenda Ueland Fiction Prize for “Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley,” 2010
Finalist for the 2008 Washington State Book Award, Strange As This Weather Has Been
Finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award, Strange As This Weather Has Been
2007 Weatherford Prize for best fiction/poetry about Appalachia,  Strange As This Weather Has Been
Plattner Award for Nonfiction for “Virtual Hillbilly,” 2006
Doris Roberts/William Goyen Fellowship in Fiction, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, 2005
Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship, 2005
Julia Peterkin Prize, 2005
Pushcart Prize for “Dog Song,” 2004
West Virginia Commission on the Arts Fellowship, 2004
Whiting Writers Award, 2003
Glasgow Prize for Given Ground, Washington and Lee University, 2003
First Place, New Millennium Writings, Creative Nonfiction, 2003
Katherine Nason Bakeless Fellow, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 2001
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, 2001
Bakeless Literary Publication Prize for Given Ground, 2000
Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Fiction, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2000
National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writers' Fellowship Grant, 1996