Fragments From Floyd

...whose name you cannot pronounce.

The new issue of Nantahala Review is (finally) ready for readers. Knowing more about the online literary publication having attended the App Studies session last week, the website truly is an interesting creation coordinated across the distance and winding roads of Appalachia. I announced some while back I would have something in this issue, and have been able to access certain pages for many weeks. Everything is in place now on all pages, so I hope you'll explore.

On the Non-fiction page, you'll find some interesting reading. I highly recommend Liza Fields piece. I've exchanged emails with Liza and know a good bit of her activism in our former home town of Wytheville. She walks the talk and is an excellent writer. My piece here (On Eagle Wings) may fit someday into a book prologue about finding and getting to know our place here on Goose Creek--the place the eagle saw when we were blind to the future and losing hope of finding home.

At last weekend's conference, I was pleased to meet Rob Merritt, editor of Nantahala Review and especially gratified that he chose to come to my presentation. Rob has a piece in this issue that expresses a hopeful and helpful perspective on living with ambivalence in the beauty and decay of coal communities of West Virginia.

Lastly, if you're a Wendell Berry fan, read Jim Minick's interview with Mr. and Mrs. Berry. Jim is a former Floyd resident moved to Wytheville and teaches in the English Department at Radford. I met Jim for the first time after my little program last week. I was most pleased to have him attend. Since, and after seeing the spider web pictures in the program, Jim sent me a spider poem he has written. I'm hoping to find a way for you to read it. And I think I have just the (previously unposted) spider and web image to go with it.

(Larger image of the two trees before the storm is here.)