Recent Work
Books / Parts of Books
Transmontane: Essays, Random House, under contract
Solidarity Song, Random House, April 2027
Blue Not Breathing (Poetry Chapbook), Ghost Palace Press, 2024
Appalachian Ghost (Foreword) by Raymond Thompson, The University Press of Kentucky, 2024
On Dark and Bloody Ground: An Oral History of the West Virginia Mine Wars (Foreword) ed. Anne Lawrence, West Virginia University Press, 2021
Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (Chapter in Anthology) ed. Simmons Buntin, Elizabeth Dodd, and Derek Sheffield, Trinity University Press, 2020
The Book of the Dead (Introductory Essay) by Muriel Rukeyser, West Virginia University Press, 2018
Best American Essays 2017 (Chapter in Anthology) ed. Leslie Jamison, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017
Listy Silver (Artist Book) Collaboration with Lydia Moyer, 2016
Wishing Trains (Poetry Chapbook), Verse Press, 2012
Longform Nonfiction
“The Return of the Red Bandana,” Parts Unknown, 2018
“Dissatisfied with the national media’s frame, Appalachia finds its own voice,” Columbia Journalism Review, 2017
“Where Do ‘Rednecks’ Really Come From? A New Museum Has the Surprising Answer,” Yes!, 2017
“The Book of the Dead,” Oxford American, Fall 2016
“Inside a Life-Saving Rural Clinic in Appalachia” VICE, April 2016
“O Beulah Land,” Oxford American, Summer 2014
Radio
From 2008 to 2011, I produced short features about American history for BackStory. Then I freelanced, made documentaries, and helped edit the West Virginia Public Radio show Inside Appalachia. In 2022, I edited a series for WVPR, “Coal – And the Way Forward.”
I’ve also been interviewed about history on podcasts like Lawless Planet and the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor.