For 47 years, writers have gathered on the banks of Troublesome Creek at Hindman Settlement School for what has been called the premier literary gathering of the Mountain South. The list of attendees at the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop through the years reads like a Who’s Who of regional literature: James Still, Harriet Arnow, Harry Caudill, George Ella Lyon, Silas House, Barbara Kingsolver, Crystal Wilkinson, Gurney Norman, Frank X Walker and Wendell Berry.
The workshop has become an expected place to be every July for a cadre of regional writers. They gather to talk about craft, share work, and gain confidence and skill. For those who have returned year after year for decades, it is something more—a family reunion, a homecoming and a celebration of carefully cultivated community.
“Arriving at Hindman is a favorite moment for me every year,” said Harlan County’s Robert Gipe, who has been part of the workshop since 2006. “Writing is a strange and isolating thing to do. Being embraced by other writers and anticipating the week feels like Christmas morning.”
The structure of the event lends itself to camaraderie. Most participants travel to Hindman and stay on campus the entire week. Conversations happen organically across the table in the dining hall and between adjacent rocking chairs on open-air porches. Many relationships are forged over the dishwashing sink, a required task for all attendees at least once a session.
But according to Hindman’s director of literary arts, Melissa Helton, the event is truly special because of the people and the spirit they bring to the workshop. There is no hierarchy, no sense of division or ego based on publishing history or writing experience. Instead, workshop leaders in one class join as participants in another. There is an ebb and flow of teaching and learning, where everyone is taken seriously and respected as a writer.
“Writers often talk about the workshop with a mythic tone,” Helton said. “People come to be in community, and the elders feel a calling to pass along the legacy. Looking at the passage of the community through time is like seeing an Appalachian literary family tree.”
Developing Writers
The Hindman Settlement School has a rich literary legacy. Early teachers and administrators—including Lucy Furman and Ann Cobb—published journals, novels, folk songs and poetry. In 1977, Hindman alumnus and writer Albert Stewart, along with Hindman director Mike Mullins, founded the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. Their aim was to mentor young Appalachian writers and preserve the cultural heritage of the region. The two set the tone of egalitarianism and nurturing support from the beginning.
The event has grown and evolved. Beginning, emerging and established writers are all encouraged to apply. Between 80 and 100 writers attend each year, and while many return for 20, 30, even 40 years, at least a third of participants annually are first-timers. Applicants turn in poetry, short story, novel or creative nonfiction manuscripts and are selected for genre-specific classes of 12 to 15 students. The curriculum is determined by each teacher. Some are intensely craft focused; others are more generative. One beneficial element is a one-on-one critique for each student by the class leader.
Aside from the genre-specific workshops held daily, the schedule is filled with optional classes on writing for children and panel discussions about publishing. The afternoon participant readings may be the first time new writers share their work. Evenings might offer faculty readings, keynote speakers (Tennessee author and opinion writer Margaret Renkl this year), a square dance, playing music on the porches, and a trivia tournament. Schedules can be as filled or open as people need or want.
Supportive creative partnerships formed at the workshop have launched careers. Writers find friends to read manuscripts, blurb books, and help find an agent. Gipe was already an experienced playwright with Higher Ground Theater, but when he decided to try his hand at fiction, he knew where to go. The first fiction piece Gipe ever wrote was for his Appalachian Writers’ Workshop application. His first published piece was in Appalachian Heritage. The editor of Appalachian Heritage heard Gipe at a Hindman afternoon participant reading and asked if he could publish what Gipe had read. The workshop helped birth Gipe’s three illustrated novels: Trampoline, Weedeater and Pop. He took a longer novel class with a mentor he found there, and Still: The Journal published six chapters after editors saw his zines at the workshop. Gipe credits his first book contract to connections he made at the event.
Telling Appalachia’s Story
Through the development of new writers and the formation of an ethos, the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop has had a major influence on the course of place-based literature. The event is a response to early writings about the region that often were by outsiders. It is part of a larger movement of Appalachians reclaiming the right to tell their own stories, stories that are nuanced and include Affrilachian, immigrant, Eastern Band of Cherokee and queer voices.
One of those nuanced voices is that of Neema Avashia, author of the memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place. Through the workshop, she found her place in regional literature. “As a queer, desi woman who grew up in West Virginia, I wasn’t always even sure I could use the term ‘Appalachian’ to describe my identity, despite having been born and raised in the region,” Avashia shared. “But being in community with other Appalachian writers, hearing their words, hearing their responses to my words, and seeing the ways in which they’ve extended themselves to support my work has given me the powerful sense of belonging and home that I’ve been chasing ever since I moved away from West Virginia.”
Almost everyone who writes in the region has a connection to the workshop. Yet, Hindman does not want to serve as a gatekeeper or definer of “Appalachian.” Historically, mountain voices have been excluded from the mainstream; the workshop, as a response, leans toward inclusion. At Hindman literary functions, Appalachian writers are prioritized, but others are not excluded.
A Departing Ritual
Recently—no one is quite sure when it started—the workshop adopted a spontaneous tradition to close out the last evening. Attendees gather in a long line in the parking lot, and each takes a turn at holding a flashlight to read an excerpt of “The Brier Sermon” poem by Jim Wayne Miller. Couched in religious language, it serves as a reminder of the importance of knowing and honoring Appalachian identity and tradition, even while moving outside the region or into the future.
That closing ritual continues to be reinvented. Sometimes, participants read poems by Crystal Wilkinson and Irene McKinney that also relate to leaving a homeland and culture. There was an issue with everyone being able to hear the poem when they were in a long line, so traditional music leaders at Hindman have started weaving the group into a spiral before the readings begin.
It serves as a fitting symbol of the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop itself: a tradition that honors what has come before yet remains open to the evolving needs of the writing community it serves.