Author Wiley Cash is the 2017 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University. His newest novel The Last Ballad will be released October 3. Cash sat down with reporter Liz McCormick to discuss his latest work, which centers on union leader and balladeer Ella May Wiggins, who died during the Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929.
Cash received this year’s Appalachian Heritage Writer’s Award, which is presented by the West Virginia Center for the book and Shepherd University.
Cash’s first novel A Land More Kind Than Home, published in 2012, was chosen as the 2017 ‘One Book, One West Virginia’s Common Read for the State’ by the Center for the Book. Cash is also author of This Dark Road to Mercy, published in 2014.
Cash was born September 7, 1977, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He holds a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina, Asheville, an M.A. from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and a Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.
He is a teacher in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, and he currently serves as writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina, Asheville.
Cash lives with his wife and two young daughters in Wilmington, North Carolina.