Featuring:
Juliet Escoria
Elle Nash
Elizabeth Ellen
Mesha Maren
Amanda McNeil

This event is put on by Boss Babes WV, and is open to all book lovers, not just babes! Bring your questions about the process of their writing and publishing. Featuring tables & merch by Travelin Appalachian Revue & Queer Appalachia!

http://www.facebook.com/events/267456304050520/

We’re bringing FIVE extraordinary writers to Charleston for a reading and panel discussion in the MAKESHOP at MESH | Design and Development centered around process and sense of place, moderated by WV essayist and Marshall University professor Kristin Steele.

For those of us here in Appalachia, place is very much a part of our lives. Our cities are small and our communities, regardless of size, are subject to the whims and wants of an ancient topography. That’s a fancy way of saying we have to drive up and down a lot of old ass mountains and over and around a lot of old ass rivers.

But sense of place isn’t the jurisdiction of Appalachian folk alone, not even by a long shot. In the Midwest, the lives of the people there are built around the plains. Large sections of Miami are below sea-level. In the western bog lands of Ireland citizens burn peat turf, and that heavy lusty smoke permeates even the thickest of cable-knit sweaters.

In grade school we learn that animal life has four requirements: Food, Water, Space & Shelter. It’s only natural that we human beings would devote so much time and energy to writing about space and shelter – about place.

If you’ve ever even thought about writing about place, this event is for you. The five writers we’ve gathered are five of the most insightful, daring, and challenging writers in America. This event is one-of-a-kind and rare. Literally all of the credit goes to Kayla Wilson and Juliet Escoria for bringing these writers to our home. You don’t want to miss this.

This event is FREE & BYOB.

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Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books, 2018), and the chapbooks AVOKA (Ghost City Press, 2017) and i can remember the meaning of every tarot card but i can’t remember what i texted you last night (Nostrovia Press, 2016). She is a founding editor at Witch Craft Magazine, a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp, and lives in the Ozarks with her husband and their dog.
ellenash.net

Amanda MH lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in The Fix, Hobart, and Witch Craft Magazine. She can be found on twitter at @GingerMidwest. amandammcneil.wordpress.com

Mesha Maren‘s debut novel, Sugar Run, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in January 2019. She is currently the Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and also serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution.
meshamaren.com

Juliet Escoria is the author of the novel Juliet the Maniac (Melville House 2019), the story collection Black Cloud (CCM/Emily Books 2014), and the poetry collection Witch Hunt (Lazy Fascist 2016). Her writing has been published in The Fader, VICE, Catapult, New York Tyrant, and other places online and in print. She was born in Australia, raised in San Diego, and currently lives in Beckley, WV.
julietescoria.com

Elizabeth Ellen’s stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous online and print journals, including Hobart, BOMBBLOG, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, Joyland, Catapult and Bennington Review. In 2012 she received a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Teen Culture,” originally published in American Short Fiction and included in her story collection, Saul Stories (SF/LD, 2017). She is also the author of the novel Person/a, the earlier story collection Fast Machine and her eponymous poetry collection Elizabeth Ellen.
elizabethellen.com