Mid-Ohio Valley writers included in annual anthology
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PARKERSBURG -- Three writers from the region have been included in the 2023 edition of the "Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Barbara Kingsolver Volume 15."
Published by Shepherd University, the recently released edition includes contributions from Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour, Wood County native Randi Ward and retired educator Karen Whittington Nelson.
Nelson, who attended Ohio University, lives in rural Southeast Ohio and was a teacher and a nurse. She has been published in the "Women Speak Anthologies," "Gyroscope Review" and "Pudding Magazine."
Ward is a poet, translator, lyricist and photographer from Belleville. With a master's of arts in cultural studies from the University of the Faroe Islands, she has twice won the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Nadia Christensen Prize, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a Best of the Net nominee.
Ward's work has appeared in "Vencil: Anthology of Contemporary Faroese Literature," the "Beloit Poetry Journal" and "World Literature Today," among other publications, and has been featured on Folk Radio UK, NPR and "PBS NewsHour."
The Randi Ward Collection was established by the Cornell University Library in its Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in 2015.
Gunter-Seymour, Athens, founded the Women of Appalachia Project. She has won the Appalachian Anthology Photographic Art Award for her photograph "Where I Come From."
West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman, Karen Spears Zacharias, Marie Manilla, Mark DeFoe and playwright and fiction writer D.W. Gregory also are in the collection.
The anthology contains fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and essays and photographs with the literature. The anthology will be featured at the Sept. 26 Anthology Celebration, part of the Appalachian Heritage Festival at Shepherd University.
A photographic art exhibit featuring the visual art in the volume will run August through September at the Shepherd University Scarborough Library.
The fifteenth volume of the anthology focuses on the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver, the 2022 Appalachian Heritage Writer in Residence at Shepherd University and the author of "One Book One West Virginia Common."
She was in West Virginia and Shepherdstown for the Appalachian Heritage Festival last September and has collaborated with the editors in the completion of the anthology volume.
Locally, the anthology can be purchased at Four Seasons Book Store, the Shepherd University Book Store and at book shops across the state and country.