Author Larry Smith

Hear Larry read 3 of the poems here.

CHOICES

Three Novellas

Annabel Thomas

“Annabel Thomas with her heartfelt, supremely wise, and often funny trio of novellas is my new favorite writer, and I expect it will be a while before anyone comes along to take her place.” ~Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time  

 “Reading Annabel Thomas is to appreciate a master at the top of her craft. In three novellas, Choices uses the backdrop of rural Ohio to introduce real people wrestling with universal challenges. 

In ‘Dorsey and the Amishman,’ young love is caught in the crosscurrents of cultures that intertwine yet stand distinct and separate. In ‘The Lost Book,’ mature love faces physical and mental decline, as well as the demands of mortality itself. In ‘Tuesday at the Airport,’ an aging woman searches for meaning in a busy airport.

Thomas’ writing is a delight. Her characters are full, her touch deft, a single word capturing paragraphs. Her hand on the page is as sure as her characters’ hands on the hoe. The earth of her stories is a rich soil, the lines of her telling straight and true, her seeds yielding a bounty.”  ~Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack’s Memoir

Annabel Thomas

Pottery Town Blues

Short Stories

Karen Kotrba

These citizens of Pottery Town, which someone wryly names Poverty Town, make full accountings of themselves through observation and interactions at a parade, a bank, in homes, apart­ments, streets, stores, and cafés. Each story bubbles with history and place, sight, sound, and taste. Each creates a cinematic, richly detailed scene. The author leads us along store aisles, blind alleys, and misdirections to unexpected, yet satisfying conclusions. Henry David Thoreau’s adage, found printed on a small pack of sugar, may say it best: “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” Kotrba treats us to this.  —Kathleen S. Burgess, author ofWhat Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away

Karen (Frank) Kotrba

Labor Days, Labor Nights

More Stories

by Larry D. Thacker

 Here is a big-hearted carnival jammed with all the belly laughs and heart-twisting poignancy….It’s all here, folks: roller-derby angels, pygmy goats, shrunken heads, lightning-rod preachers, catfish wranglers, grieving altar-builders. Studded with unforgettable characters, Labor County is as fully realized a place as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. Grab your ticket and go!  —Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly 

US Review of Books: "Author Thacker knows how to make reading fun. From fainting pygmy goats to shrunken heads to ransom notes for kidnapped mannequins, he keeps readers surprised. His prose is refreshingly casual, his dialogue realistically conversational, and his forays into philosophy frequently ironic. There's a Will Rogers, Jeff Foxworthy tone to his writing that often takes readers one way and leaves them someplace they weren't expecting to go."  -Joe Kilgore

  Larry Thacker’s Labor Days, Labor Nights. inventive yarns veer from the charming to the profound and pinball between madcap hijinks and haunting sadness. At every turn, they confound expectation in a way quite likely to delight. Come on into Thacker’s shop. The line moves fast.  —Robert Gipe, author of PopL

Just Out  July 2021

The Country Doctor's Wife

Memoir

Cornelia Cattell Thompson

(1898-1982)

Her memoir is rich with anecdotes, for example tale of the hired girl who patched up victims of an accident while the doctor was out and the account of the frigid night she was pressed into service at a home birth alongside her then fiancé, and so much more. Cornelia is the friend and neighbor you would like to have, a woman and writer who savors life with wit and wisdom. Her memoir is a delight.  ~Karen Kotrba, author of She Who Is Like a Mare: Poems of Mary Breckinridge

In rich, well-crafted details, the well-educated Cornelia paints a vivid portrait of daily life and death of the people who carved their existence out of this part of the eastern Ohio landscape. Angela Feenerty’s judicious editing of this wonderful found manuscript allows Thompson’s witty voice to come sparkling through page after page of this delightful book. ~ Christina Fisanick, author of Digital Storytelling as Public History 

 With Doc the community’s sole medical resource, Cornelia acts as his unheralded assistant and life-partner yet manages to richly chronicle their shared adventures. She presents it all with lively brush strokes. Putting this book down, you may find yourself stepping back a bit to fully take in an impressionist’s vivid portrayal of who we are. ~Patrick Lawrence O’Keeffe, author of Cold Air Return: A Novel

Co-Published by

Bottom Dog Press

and 

The Historical Society of Mount Pleasant, Ohio

. 

The Long Way Home

Stories

by Ron Lands

In riveresque prose, Ron Lands carries us with fearless grace over the eddies and jutting rocks of lives in small-town Tennessee. We are in our very own homes in these stories, but in the metaphorical attics and basements—places that lights are too often kept turned off. The Long Way Home surely offers a sense of place, but more than that, invites us to reconsider how we navigate what's found there: the breathing of lives lived, lives lost, our own mirrors of life and death. I salute the hard craft of these stories, the earned victory—the further you delve into them, the more they become your own.              ~Timothy Dodd author of Fissures: Stories

These stories take place in the homes, doctor’s offices, and hospital rooms of a small Tennessee town, where doctors intimately know their patients, and patients exist in a generational no-mans’ land between house calls and contemporary medicine. Lands’ ability to explore their humanity as his characters navigate the unfamiliar makes these stories shimmer. Beautifully rendered sentence after sentence, The Long Way Home is the work of an expert in his fields.   ~Susan Perabo, author of The Fall of Lisa Bellow

* * * * *

"When arriving at the end of this story cycle, it feels instinctive to turn again to the beginning. It is the same way one shares tales from one's life with family and friends, exploring oneself and one another, discovering new horizons and boundaries with each telling. This book contains just the right mix of bittersweet love and loss to savor as readers find their own way home."  Review by Kate Robinson

RECOMMENDED by the US Review

Ron Lands

40 Patchtown

A Novel

Damian Dressick

"40 Patchtown is evocative, haunting, told with page-turning momentum, and reveals an insider's understanding of the societal complexities that keep miners returning to the earth's dark underbelly. Damian Dressick, a talented and thoughtful writer, is the freshest voice to come out of Appalachia since Wiley Cash arrived on the literary scene." ~ Karen Spears Zacharias, author of Mother of Rain

 Inspired by incidents during the 1922 coal strike in Pennsylvania, Dressick spent months researching the rhythms of early coal town life. Interviewing family members, retired miners, their wives, and widows, he immersed himself in the coal heritage materials, many housed at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Described by Frederick Barthelme as “an artist to be reckoned with,” Dressick currently teaches at Clarion University.

 Deftly paced, gritty and poised, pitch perfect in its voice and historical rendering, Damian Dressick’s debut novel 40 Patchtown accelerates from its opening pages with desperate energy. Set against the comfortless backdrop of the brutal 1922 coal miners’ strike of Windber, Pennsylvania, the novel follows fatherless fourteen-year-old Chet Pistakowski as he struggles to support his mother and siblings in a setting dictated by violence, poverty, and manipulation. Told in lean, convincing, and clear-eyed prose, this historical and evocative coming-of-age story reveals a young man torn between family and morality, desperation and desire, circumstances and escape.  ~James Charlesworth, author of The Patricide of George Bernard Hill

Damian Dresssick

Yeoman's Work

Poems

by Garrett Stack

The women and men in these poems—dirt under their nails, rust flaking off their hearts—are so fully realized they might as well be sitting next to you at the diner when you read them. Through generous empathy and a keen eye, Garret Stack reveals the cooling embers in strangers’ souls before kindling them, so that they might once again faintly glow. The poems build to powerful resonant images and gut-punch final lines. Yeoman’s Work is a hell of a debut. ~Adam Schuitema, author of The Things We Do that Make Sense

       Garrett Stack

Drone String

Poems

Sherry Cook Stanforth

"In this fully mature first book, Sherry Cook Stanforth braids together place, family, and music in imagery that ranges from homey as 'hominy and banjos' to taut as a dulcimer’s string. Drone String re-members the familial past, and imagines how, through the integrative power of tradition and memory, that past is part of now, insistent and intact. Vivid portraits and telling anecdotes remind us that all our lives are worthy, full of stories and meaning. A professor-musician, and part of a family band for decades, Stanforth has an ear for how people really sound, and for how poetry dances language into song."

~Dick Hague, author of Where Drunk Men Go

Fissures, And Other Stories

Timothy Dodd

Contemporary Appalachian

Writing Series

“Timothy Dodd’s stories, set mostly in West Virginia towns and in the shallow country bordering the deep country of forest and farms, are likely to remind readers of other writers, Breece Pancake and Gurney Norman; but Dodd is his own man. His stories offer surprising new takes, like the sleight of hand at the end of “Postcards,” a tale about leaving home. From first story to last, Dodd reveals how tentative are the lines between hope and despair, past and present, and life and death. The fissures in these stories are both wounds and means of escape, deftly wrought and lit with a sly humor that doesn’t force itself on anyone.” ~Eddy Pendarvis, author of Ghost Dance Poems

* * *

"Coming onto the scene with a fresh but assured voice, the stories in Fissures are sure to impress readers with their maturity and clear-eyed perceptions of the world as it is today. There is nothing precious here, only the truth about a place that is often maligned or misunderstood. Timothy Dodd gets it, and he gets it right. I look forward to reading much more from him as he makes his mark in contemporary writing about the mountains.” ~Charles Dodd White, author of In the House of Wilderness

Author: Timothy Dodd



Mama's Song

A Novel

by P.  Shaun Neal

In this finely written epic coming-of-age story, young Colby learns the difference between self-reliance and isolation, between his father’s solitary strength and his mother’s collapsing stoicism. P. Shaun Neal's story, labored on for years and dedicated to revelation of a people and a land, builds to a dramatic and unforgettable climax. ~Joe Anthony, author of A Wounded Snake

 Neal conjures a large cast of fully-realized characters, damaged and humane and true to life, set down in a time and place where kinship and a jagged faith in the Lord and in the next harvest mean everything, where want and thankfulness are as familiar as a favorite bible verse and even the young must acknowledge the hushed dominion of death. Mama's Song will pull you in from the first page to its gripping climax. ~David T. Miller, author of Chicago Heights

P. Shaun Neal

Joseph Anthony’s fine historical novel A Wounded Snake presents a compassionate, yet unsentimental, study of race, politics, law, and lawlessness in the near-South, turn of the 20th Century city of Lexington, Kentucky. Local information about events and personalities is set up as precisely as lead type placed, letter by letter, onto a printing press, to reveal line by line, in stark black and white, how a century ago “a good truth....did more than a fist in the face could ever do.” In today’s atmosphere of renewed racial tension, A Wounded Snake serves to remind the reader that “we cannot be in this place we’ve been.” For although “forgetting is what we do best in the South,” it’s time to remember and change. ~Christina Lovin, author of A Stirring in she Dark and Echo: Poems 

 Praise for Anthony's Wanted: Good Family: “The book is masterfully written and well grounded in Kentucky history and mannerisms. It explores race, class, relationships and the potential for change-- issues that are as relevant today as they were when this story takes place more than six decades ago.” ~Tom Eblen, The Lexington Herald-Leader 

Also Available on Amazon Kindle

 Joseph G. Anthony

 Old Brown: Poems

by Craig Paulenich

Here's a fine book that dares to look into the heart of the personage of the American abolitionist John Brown. Using all of the tools which he can imagine Craig Paulenich plunges into the heart of the man and of America.

“A masterful lyricist who mixes imagination and history to create a canvas large enough and deep enough to hold a man the size of enigmatic John Brown.” ~Joyce Dyer

"Powerful and unwavering, Paulenich digs deep into nineteenth century history, using Captain John Brown as a touchstone to illuminate America’s uneasy relationship with race and its obsession with violence. Part poetry, part history, Paulenich’s portrait is an indictment of our contemporary times, his John Brown both prophet and terrorist, hero and cold-blooded killer, an everyman for our schizophrenic America. In stunningly imaginative poems that range from catalogs of the dead to lyric meditations on religion’s role in our complicity, Paulenich masterfully connects the dots from Harper’s Ferry to our modern terrorist state, pointing out along the way that 'Slavery is the American Leviathan, and we,/ Jonah’s all, rattle about inside its brass ribs.' ” ~Peter Grandbois, author of  Kissing the Lobster

Also available on Kindle

 Craig Paulenich

          Brown Bottle

A Novel

by Sheldon Lee Compton

Wade “Brown Bottle” Taylor is an alcoholic uncle trying to protect his nephew Nick from the hardness of their region, Eastern Kentucky, and the world in general. To end Nick's involvement with drugs and drug dealers in the area, Brown must first save himself, overcoming a lifetime spent convinced he is unworthy. Brown Bottle's journey is one of selflessness and love, redemption and sacrifice, if only for a time.

 "Sheldon Lee Compton is a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown, and Brown Bottle is his best work yet."

~ Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time…..

"Sheldon Lee Compton is one of the new young breed of Kentucky writers--talented, fearless, and strong--bringing us word from the hills."

~ Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight

A Small Room with Trouble on My Mind and Other Stories

by Michael Henson

"Michael Henson is the Philip Levine of the urban Appalachian working class.  His writing is so immediate that you feel the vibrations of guitar strings and sirens, smell beer and sweat, and hear broken glass crunch under your feet. Nothing is pretty in this world, but much is beautiful, seen through Henson’s compassion for his characters and his clarity about generations wrecked by capitalism without conscience. It is our shame as a society that A Small Room with Trouble on My Mind speaks even louder in 2016 than it did when it was first published over thirty years ago. We need this book."   ~George Ella Lyon, author of Many-Storied House,

"Mike Henson’s A Small Room With Trouble On My Mind, with its gritty realism and almost utopian faith in the transformative power of art, it provides a compelling voice for yet another disenfranchised, marginalized, and still misunderstood group in American society. Originally published in 1983, Henson’s book continues to resonate. It’s great to have it back in print." ~Norman Finkelstein, Xavier University



Contemporary Fiction of Appalachia

Appalachian Now

Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia

Editors: Larry Smith and Charles Dodd White

Authors: Darnell Arnoult, Rusty Barnes, Matt Brock, Taylor Brown, Chris Holbrook, David Joy, Marie Manilla, Charles Dodd White, Mesha Maren, Carrie Mullins, Chris Offutt, Mark Powell, Jon Sealy, Savannah Sipple, Jacinda Townsend,  Meredith Sue Willis

Appalachia Now is an essential and necessary collection of stories. For too many, the people of Appalachia are little more than stereotypes. Appalachia Now undoes that injustice by representing the real people of Appalachia today without forgetting that we can’t help but be shaped by our geography. Appalachia is as much a character here as are any of these diverse, complex, troubled characters. This collection is a delving—an invitation into a world often represented by pop culture, but seldom as authentically nor as skillfully as by the writers herein. ~Jeff Vande Zande

“The geologic entry to the Appalachian foothills… had a foreboding quality, a warning to travelers that the world beyond was very different.” So states Chris Offutt in his story, “Back Porch.” His and other stories collected in Appalachia Now serve to hammer the point home like a coal miner’s pick or a fist to the jaw.” ~Christina Lovin

178 pgs. $17 from us direct.

 *This book is a follow-up to the best selling Degrees of Elevation anthology published by Bottom Dog Press in 2010.

 

Degrees of Elevation:

Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia

A wonderful and rich collection of some of our best fiction writers treating the American landscape of Appalachia and its people.

  Writers include: Rusty Barnes,  Sheldon Lee Compton, Jarrid Deaton, Richard Hague, Silas House, Chris Holbrook, Denton Loving, Mindy Beth Miller, John McManus, Jim Nichols, Valerie Nieman, Chris Offutt, Mark Powell, Ron Rash, Alex Taylor, Crystal Wilkinson

"From manic to elegiac to rough, raw, beautiful, and heartbreaking, these stories will strike the reader as both absolutely true and as unforgettable, like the high pure ring of an ax on a cold winter morning, vibrating across distance, hanging in the air long afterward."  -Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace

                                     186 pgs. 978-1-933964-39-3

Wanted: Good Family

1948: Wanted: a good family for a Scott County, Kentucky tenant farm. Rudy Johnson moves his young family from nearby Lexington. Only the farm owners weren't expecting the good family to be "colored."

"Joe Anthony refuses to treat his characters with less than the respect such complex individuals deserve, their depth and humanity so exposed. Anthony's skillful interweaving of many narrative voices allows us to feel their pain and sorrow, their prejudice and greed and lack of guile. Flawed and only sometimes heroic, they are fellow travelers with no map of the terrain before them." ~David Thurman Miller of Appalachian Heritage



Sinners of Sanction County: Stories

by Charles Dodd White

 Fine stories of character and place set

in the South

In our Appalachia Fiction Series

Sinners of Sanction County is one of the best story collections to come out of the American South in recent times. Writing in a spare, poetic style that fairly crackles with energy, Charles Dodd White makes his mark as a major new talent as he masterfully explores the raw beauty and pathos of life among tough people caught in bad situations. With this book, he has nailed the coonskin to the wall.      -- Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All The Time and Knockemstiff

Early Reviews:

"True, Hawkins buried his son more than once that summer," begins "Hawkins' Boy," the lead story in Sins of Sanction County. "Buried" is the key foreshadowing in this first line because the subsequent stories are full of attempts to bury the past and the dead and, sometimes, entomb the living. White renders stories that burrow deep to the pit of private pain, revealing an ever-burning blaze too powerful to battle that we should quietly let engulf us, and learn to suffer the eventual scarring.

Although White's sensibilities will surely evoke similarities to fellow Southern writers as Ron Rash and William Gay, I felt his kinship more in line with Walt Whitman, who, like White, extoled in the ecstatic naturalism of the world, supplanting the inherent foibles of human nature with the disinterested glory of everlasting nature as elicited in this passage from "Hawkin's Boy" ~Matt Baker, Oxford America

Read an excerpt: "The Hawkins's Boy"

Charles Dodd White Homepage

160 pgs. $16.00