I was honored to serve as a nonfiction teacher at the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop (AWW). AWW is held for one week each summer when writers from all over the Appalachian region gather at Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky to study fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I had a blast. I’ve attended one other writers’ workshop as a student, but that workshop felt very large and impersonal in comparison. AWW feels very intimate, though there were probably almost one hundred of us on campus and more than one hundred attending virtually. There were no egos there, and though I had never met any of these writers before, I felt a sense of camaraderie that I have never felt as a student or as a teacher before. Magical place.

I was also given the opportunity to read from one of my essays in front of a live audience. I read with Robert Gipe, who is not only a good writer but also very friendly and personable. Here’s the recording of our reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqFFEwhlLC4

We were treated with readings every night during the week by writers like Annette Clapsaddle, Frank X. Walker, Leah Hampton, and George Ella Lyon, just to name a few. Our keynote speaker was Adriana Trigiani, a writer whose work I’ve been reading for years. I love her Big Stone Gap series.