The Appalachian Heritage Project's collection of books at the Strawberry Plains campus library features a diversity of women writers including historic writers such as Emma Bell Miles and Wilma Dykeman, leading contemporary fiction writers and poets such as Nikki Giovanni and Barbara Kingsolver, and emerging new voices of Appalachia like Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Neema Avashia.
Neema Avashia was born and raised outside Charleston, WV in the Kanawha Valley where her father worked in the chemical industry. Her award-winning first book Another Appalachia: Growing up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place was published in 2022 and "examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia’s identity as a queer, desi, Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole." - NeemaAvashia.com
Another Appalachia: Growing up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place PSCC SP Appalachian Collection F247.K2 A83 2022
Award-winning writer and teacher Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and lives in Qualla, North Carolina. Her first published novel, Even as We Breathe, takes place in the mountains of North Carolina and the famous Grove Park Inn outside Asheville during World War II. A former editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and director of the Cherokee Preservation Society, Clapsaddle currently teaches English in Swain County, NC. - asaunookeclapsaddle.com
Writer, speaker, activist, and teacher Wilma Dykeman was born near Asheville, North Carolina in 1920. Her accomplishments and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sidney Hillman Award, the first woman trustee of Berea College, a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the first woman Tennessee State Historian, membership in the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, and membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
The Tall Woman / Wilma Dykeman. PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3554.Y5 T32 1962
The Far Family / Wilma Dykeman. PSCC SP Appalachian Coll ; PS3554.Y5 F3 1966
Prophet of Plenty: the First Ninety Years of W.D. Weatherford / Wilma Dykeman. PSCC SP Appalachian Coll ; CT275.W348 D9 1966
Return the Innocent Earth / Wilma Dykeman PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3554 .Y5 R4 1973
The French Broad / Wilma Dykeman PSCC SP Appalachian Collection F443.8.F8 D9 1992
Author of stories of mountain life, Mildred E. Haun was born in Hamblen County, Tennessee in 1911 but was raised in Haun Hollow in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County in a large family of strong, independent mountain farmers. The only collection of fiction published by Haun, The Hawk's Done Gone (1940), includes several of the stories she had written while in college at Vanderbilt. This work consists of a group of stories linked by the narrator Mary Dorthula White and members of several families. It combines modern realism with ancient beliefs and superstitions, creating a disturbing, yet intriguing look at mountain life in the period from the Civil War to 1940. -Tennessee Encyclopedia
Poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, she and her sister returned to Knoxville each summer to visit their grandparents. Nikki graduated with honors in history from her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University. Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. -- Nikki-Giovanni.com
Racism 101 / Nikki Giovanni PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3557.I55 Z47 1994
On My Journey Now: Looking at African American History through the Spirituals PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3557.I55 O6 2007
A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laugher / Nikki Giovanni PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3557.I55 A6 2017
Kentucky's Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson is from Indian Creek, Casey County, Kentucky, and a founding member of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is a 2020 United States Artists Fellow and teaches at the University of Kentucky. -Kentucky.gov
The Birds of Opulence / Crystal Wilkinson. PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3573.I44184 B57 2016
Perfect Black / Crystal Wilkinson, Ronald W. Davis. PSCC SP Appalachian Collection PS3573.I44184 P47 2021