Who teaches writing?

Who Teaches Writing is an open teaching and learning resource being used in English Composition classes at Oklahoma State University. It was authored by contributors from Oklahoma State University and also includes invited chapters from other institutions both inside and outside of Oklahoma. Contributors include faculty from various departments, contingent faculty and staff, and graduate instructors. One purpose of the resource is to provide short, relatively jargon-free chapters geared toward undergraduate students taking First-Year Composition. Support for this project was provided in part by OpenOKState and Oklahoma State University Libraries.OpenOKStateOklahoma State University LibrariesLibraryEnglis

An Infestation

In An Infestation, Sarah Beth Childers explores the hypnopompic hallucinations she began experiencing after she left Appalachia for Oklahoma, three years after her brother’s Joshua’s suicide. Experienced in a state between waking and sleeping, Sarah Beth’s hallucinations included a snake dropping from the ceiling into her bed and a writhing pile of creatures on her bedsheets that seemed to be a cross between maggots and rats. The essay tells the story of Joshua’s desperation to leave Appalachia for New York City, and it contrasts Sarah Beth’s voluntary displacement with the region’s native population, many of whom arrived via the Trail of Tears. This essay explores displacement and migration as both causes and cures for grief. Originally published in the Colorado Review, this essay is part of Smoo, Sarah Beth’s memoir-in-progress about Joshua’s life and suicide, her own and her family’s grief, and the particularly Appalachian problem of having a family too strong, too independent, and too Christian to seek treatment for mental illness

Panel: New Appalachian Visions: Four Authors Discuss Their Novels and Creative Nonfiction Books of 2013-14.

Panel: New Appalachian Visions: Four Authors Discuss Their Novels and Creative Nonfiction Books of 2013-14. In this exciting panel, four authors who each have a new book set in Appalachia present the history and visions that impelled them to write these books. Two books are novels, two are essay collections/creative nonfiction, and all four are being published by respected presses between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014. Authors will briefly read from their forthcoming books and discuss some of the complex realities of Appalachian place and identity, including choices they made in interpreting and portraying Appalachia. Authors are: Sara Beth Childers, a Huntington native whose essays about Appalachian family and storytelling are collected in her first book, Shake Terribly the Earth: Stories from an Appalachian Family ( Ohio U. P., Fall 2013); Sue Eisenfeld, a seasoned, award-winning journalist whose first book evolved from years of hiking and research as she uncovered the hidden and destroyed histories of the lost communities of the Shenandoah National Park (U. Nebraska, Fall 2014); Laura Long, whose third book and first novel, Out of Peel Tree, lyrically portrays an extended West Virginia family and the Appalachian diaspora (WVU P., Apr 2014); and Marie Manilla, an acclaimed fiction writer whose third book, The Patron Saint of Ugly, is a rich novel that explores the Italian-American experience in West Virginia and encompasses magical-realism and the Evil Eye (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2014). The panel plans time for discussion, including audience questions