The first volume of the Northern Appalachia Review was published by Sunbury Press in August of this year and includes the work of several writers from the Mid-Ohio Valley. The annual journal, the only one of its kind dedicated to the literature of northern Appalachia, seeks to convey the character of the people and places of this region by publishing work that best represents them as both culturally distinct from yet part of greater Appalachia. 

Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief PJ Piccirillo, an instructor of English and Humanities at Butler County Community College in Butler, Pennsylvania, identifies northern Appalachia as including the Appalachian counties of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and the northern portion of West Virginia. In his introduction to the new journal, Piccirillo writes of a rising collective voice within the region: “People in or of these parts have great stories to tell, and the world wants and needs to hear them.” 

Wood County writers Susan Sheppard, David B. Prather, Randi Ward, and Barb McCullough each have poems published in the new journal. Sheppard is the creator of the Haunted Parkersburg Ghost Tours and also a founding member of West Virginia Writers, Inc. Prather, who has been active with the Actors Guild of Parkersburg for over 20 years, had his debut poetry collection “We Were Birds” released by Main Street Rag Publishing last year. McCullough is a former editor of Confluence Literary Magazine, a writing consultant, and an educator who retired after 35 years teaching in Wood County Schools. Ward, founder of the Parkersburg Poetry Series, is a literary translator, lyricist and photographer. Other writers from the area included in the Review are Ohio’s current Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour, novelist and poet Bonnie Proudfoot, and poet Stephanie Kendrick.

The editors of the 264-page Northern Appalachia Review hope that the publication serves as a catalyst to inspire more novels, poetry, essays, history, memoir, drama, and other kinds of writing that will help articulate the literary identity of the region; compiling a body of work by the region’s writers is also essential to establishing a literary canon for the literature of northern Appalachia. 

To read the article in its entirety, visit The Parkersburg News and Sentinel.