Selected Social Justice Journalism

Guest Commentary: Racism and Politics Alive and Well in NY19, The Daily Star, Oneonta, NY, Oct 19, 2018

Commentary: Republicans Tried to Beat Delgado with Racist Distortions, The Times Union, Albany, NY, November 7, 2018.

Parallels Between Abolitionism and Anti-Fracking Push, The Daily Star, Oneonta, NY, March 5, 2011.

Interviews with Writers

"The Art of Healing: An Interview with Lee Smith." North Carolina Literary Review, 30 (2021).

"A Virtual Road-Trip Interview: Conversations with Five Expatriate North Carolina Writers." North Carolina Literary Review, 29 Online (2020).

“A Visitation with Randall Kenan.” North Carolina Literary Review, 28 (2019).

“Renaissance Man: An Interview with Clyde Edgerton.” North Carolina Literary Review, 26 (2017).

“The Seen and the Unseen: An Interview with Wiley Cash.” North Carolina Literary Review, 22 (2013): 92-104.

“Old Times on the Haw: An Interview with Dale Ray Phillips.” Conducted with Timothy Williams. The Carolina Quarterly, 55.3 (2003): 63-73.

“An Interview with Lee Smith and Hal Crowther.” The Carolina Quarterly, 54.1 (2001): 62-78.

“Tom Wolfe in Full: An Interview.” Conducted with Farrell O’Gorman. The Carolina Quarterly, 53.2 (2001): 30-45

“An Interview with Fred Chappell.” The Carolina Quarterly, 52.1 (1999): 67-79.

Writing About Literature (Peer-Reviewed)

Book :

Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction, An approach to the work of Doris Betts, Reynolds Price, Fred Chappell, Lee Smith, Clyde Edgerton, and Randall Kenan. University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Articles:

“The Cornerstones of Community in Robert Morgan's The Truest Pleasure and This Rock.” Essays on Robert Morgan. Ed. Robert West. McFarland Publishing, 2021.

“Raymond Carver’s Decentered Narratives.” Short Story NS 22.1 (Spring 2014).

“The Legacy of Thomas Wolfe in Contemporary Appalachian Fiction: Four Recent North Carolina Novels.” The Thomas Wolfe Review, 36.1&2 (2012): 70-91.

“10 North Carolina Stories that Ought to be Films.” [Creative Nonfiction Essay] North Carolina Literary Review, 21 (2012): 145-158.

“The Classical Ecopoetics of Fred Chappell’s Backsass and Midquest.” North Carolina Literary Review, 20 (2011): 98-110.

“Wolfe’s Racism Revisited: A Response to Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr.” The Thomas Wolfe Review, 34 (2010): 87-100.

“Beyond the Lost Generation: The Death of Egotism in Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again.” The Thomas Wolfe Review, 33 (2009): 32-47.

“In Praise of ‘Forward Looking Men’: Thomas Wolfe’s Rejection of Pastoral in ‘The Hills Beyond.’”

Appalachian Heritage (Fall 2007): 47-58. [Winner of the 2007 Denny C. Plattner Award for best nonfiction publication.]

“Assuming the Mantle of Storyteller: Fred Chappell and Frontier Humor.” Intersecting Paths: The Enduring Legacy of the Humor of the Old Southwest in Modern and Contemporary Southern Literature and Popular Culture. Ed. Ed Piacentino. Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 156-73.

“The Legacy of Thomas Wolfe in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction.” The Thomas Wolfe Review 29.1&2 (2005): 76-90.

“Darker Vices and Nearly Incomprehensible Sins: The ‘Fate of Poe’ in Fred Chappell's Early Novels.” More Lights Than One: The Fiction of Fred Chappell. Ed. Patrick Bizzaro. Louisiana State University Press, 2004. 28-50.

“‘I Contain Multitudes’: Randall Kenan’s Walking on Water as Collective Autobiography.” The Southern Literary Journal, 36.2 (2004): 100-125.

“Fifty Percent Illusion: The Mask of the Southern Belle in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and ‘Portrait of a Madonna.’” Tennessee Williams Journal, 5.1 (2003): 11-22. (Reprinted in Critical Insights: Tennessee Williams, ed. Brenda Murphy, Salem Press, 2011.)

“The Raney Controversy: Clyde Edgerton's Fight for Creative Freedom.” Southern Cultures 7.2 (2001): 60-83.

“‘When You Got True Dirt, You Got Everything You Need’: Forging an Appalachian Arcadia in Fred Chappell's Midquest.” Mississippi Quarterly (2000): 389-414.

Selected Book Reviews

"A Twilight Reel: Stories by Michael Amos Cody." The New Southern Fugitive online magazine, May 26, 2021.

“Dismantling the Confederacy: A Review of A Sin By Any Other Name, by Robert W. Lee, IV, and The Tarboro Three, by Brian Lampkin.” The New Southern Fugitives online magazine, Vol. 2, Iss. 25, October 23, 2019.

Review, “Brad Aaron Modlin’s Everybody at this Party Has Two Names.” The New Southern Fugitives online magazine, October 24, 2018.

“Charles Frazier Among the Swells: A Review of Varina by Charles Frazier.” The New Southern Fugitives online magazine, August 29, 2018.

Review, “Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad.” The New Southern Fugitives online magazine, June 2018.

Review, “Fifty Shades of Minotaur [a review of The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time, by Steven Sherrill.” North Carolina Literary Review Online 2018 (January, 2018).

Review, “Many homes: a review of Seeking Home: Marginalization and Representation in Appalachian Literature and Song by Worthington, Leslie Harper and Jürgen E. Grandt, eds., Tennessee UP, 2016. In American Literary History OUP journal. (Fall 2017).

Review, “Magic Again: Selected Poems on Thomas Wolfe, Edited by David Radavich and David Strange.” The Thomas Wolfe Review, Vol 40 (June, 2016).

“A Review of The Poor Children: Stories, by April Ford.” New Madrid (Winter, 2015): 120-22.

“Mapping the Unknown Self: New Carolina Poetry” [A review of The Countries We Live In by David Radavich and Concertina by Joseph Bathanti]. North Carolina Literary Review Online 2015 (January, 2015): 101-07.

“The Bible Salesman and the Magician.” A Review of The Bible Salesman, by Clyde Edgerton, and Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, by Daniel Wallace. North Carolina Literary Review, 18 (2009): 228-31

Review-Essay, “Four Slave Narratives from the Old North State.” A Review of North Carolina Slave Narratives: The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, & Thomas H. Jones, edited by William L. Andrews.” Mississippi Quarterly, 58.1-2 (2005): 397-404.

“Understanding Fred Chappell, by John Lang.” Mississippi Quarterly, 56.3 (2003): 478-82.

“This is Where We Live: Short Stories by 25 Contemporary N.C. Writers, Michael McFee, Editor. ” Southern Cultures 7.2 (2001): 115-19.

“Of Mythic Beasts and Mobile Homes I Sing, a Review of Steven Sherrill’s The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.” North Carolina Literary Review, 10 (2001): 142-44.

“Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers by Nancy C. Parrish. ” Mississippi Quarterly, 53.2 (2000): 362-66.

“Where Trouble Sleeps by Clyde Edgerton.” The Carolina Quarterly, 50.2 (1998): 122-24.

Literary Encyclopedia Entries

“Postsouthern Literature.” The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Ed. Thomas Inge. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture: The University of Mississippi, March 2008. 126-131.

“Kenan, Randall.” African American National Biography. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Oxford UP, February 2008. 60-61.

“Fred Chappell,” “Hal Crowther,” “Allan Gurganus,” “Randall Kenan.” Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary. Eds. Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel. Louisiana State UP, 2006. 66, 91, 172-73, 230-31.

“K-Mart Fiction,” “The Lazy South,” “Masking,” “Minimalism,” “Pentecostals,” “Televangelists.” A Companion to Southern Literature. Eds. Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan. Louisiana State UP, 2002. 394-96, 420-423, 477-79, 492-94, 624-27, 876-78.

“Leslie Marmon Silko.” Good Fiction Guide. Ed. Jane Rogers. Oxford UP, Fall 2002. 442.

Poetry

“Your Mee-Maw Vs. Cabot Oil and Gas.” In Mountains Piled upon Mountains: New Appalachian Nature Writing, from University of West Virginia Press, 2019.