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48th Annual Conference
Logo by: Otis Smyth. Learn more about it here.
Rural Reimagined: A Grand Challenge for Appalachia
March 20-22, 2025
Tennessee Tech University
Cookeville, Tennessee
Photographer Sabrina L. Greene
Showcases
The Publishers' Book
Signing Reception
In addition to reading events accepted through the regular proposal system, we have planned two additional program opportunities to highlight Appalachian literary production.
Our Program Committee invites poets and prose writers in our community to perform their work on stage in a special Author’s Showcase. Writers must be registered to attend the conference and able to be onsite on Thursday evening to participate. Literary journals based in Appalachia (whether staff is in attendance or not) are invited to submit display copies of their magazine or journal for attendees to browse in an Editors’ Showcase running for the duration of the conference. Please indicate whether you wish to participate on or before March 13, 2025, by entering your information on Google forms:
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•Author’s Showcase (individual authors)
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•Editors’ Showcase (editors/literary publications)
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We are pleased to announce that the University Press of Kentucky will be sponsoring the Publishers’ Book Signing Reception! They invite you to be their guest at this event that highlights Appalachian publishers/presses and will feature books and authors! Publishers, presses, and authors may attend the event to sign and sell books without cost thanks to the generous sponsorship of the University Press of Kentucky.
Food and drink will be provided. Space is limited and first come, first serve.
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To reserve your space contact
Ann E. Bryant at: mullins88@marshall.edu
Program Chair
Erin Hoover is an Assistant Professor of English at Tennessee Tech University, where she teaches creative writing and courses in editing and publishing. She is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), which won the Antivenom Poetry Award and a Florida Book Award, and No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023). Hoover curates and hosts a monthly reading series, Sawmill Poetry, and she produces “Not Abandon, but Abide,” an interview series of women and genderqueer poets for the Southern Review of Books. Currently, Hoover is a board member of the Southern Literary Festival, which each year hosts a conference for undergraduate writers at a member school. In the past, she has served on the executive committee of the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference, helping to plan the annual conference held in Arkansas.
Conference Chair
Born and raised in Georgia, Monic Ductan is now a Tennessean and an Associate Professor of English at Tennessee Tech University. She has degrees from Georgia State University, Georgia College, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Monic’s book, a loosely linked collection of stories called Daughters of Muscadine, focuses on working-class Black women, estrangement, and family life in rural Georgia. Monic won the 2023 Weatherford Award for Daughters of Muscadine, and the Georgia Center for the Book included Muscadine on its list, “Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2024. She is also the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission grant in fiction. Monic’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Kweli, Shenandoah, Oxford American, Still, and Appalachian Review. She is at work on her first novel, a book about a woman uncovering police corruption in a small, Southern town.
Campus Arrangements Chair
Colleen L. Mestayer (Ph.D., University of Southern Mississippi, 2016) is currently a senior lecturer of communication at Tennessee Technological University. Her areas of interest include community engagement, message strategies and their impact on interpersonal relationships in nonprofit and for-profit organizations and in educational entities. She has published works on teamwork and instructional technology for college classrooms, as well as religious communication in organizational settings. She currently serves her state and regional communication association’s annual conferences and is involved with a downtown engagement project for Cookeville’s historic downtown area. Prior to academia, Dr. Mestayer had an accomplished marketing career which gave her great insight into the role of communication in the business world.