This year, a beloved and familiar presence made the event even more special – iconic character standees, books and activities from Sesame Street, courtesy of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
The 2023 West Virginia Book Festival came to life in Charleston, as book lovers of all ages flocked to the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
This year, a beloved and familiar presence made the event even more special – iconic character standees, books and activities from Sesame Street, courtesy of West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB).
Reading took center stage in this year’s festival as WVPB distributed hundreds of free books to children of all ages. But the festivities extended far beyond the world of books.
Families were treated to a day filled with creative crafts, engaging games, and invaluable information about learning opportunities for children. The event was not merely about reading; it was about celebrating the joy of learning and the endless possibilities that come with it.
Learn more about WVPB Education and how our team strives to educate, inform and inspire.
When Frank X. Walker looked up the word Appalachia in a dictionary 30 years ago, he saw it was defined with the phrase “the white residents of the Appalachian mountains.” As a man of color, he said that shook him. His latest work is a children’s book, using the alphabet to identify and focus on people of color who grew up in Appalachia. It is called “A is for Affrilachia.”
When Frank X. Walker looked up the word Appalachia in a dictionary 30 years ago, he saw it was defined with the phrase “the white residents of the Appalachian mountains.” As a man of color, he said that shook him.
That’s when the poet coined the term “Affrilachia” with his writing group. He said it has driven him to show readers that our region is made up of more than one race.
His latest work is a children’s book, using the alphabet to identify and focus on people of color who grew up in Appalachia. It is called “A is for Affrilachia.”
News Director Eric Douglas spoke to him about poetry and the new book.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Explain to me — as a person who admits that they struggle with poetry — tell me what will make it clear for me.
Patrick Mitchell
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Frank X. Walker
Walker: I don’t know if I can make it clear, I can make you feel less responsible. I think the challenge of poetry is that a lot of other people have given poetry a bad reputation. Because of the way it was taught in schools, if your first introduction to poetry is through a Shakespearean sonnet, and you’re 15 years old, and everything about Elizabethan England, is so, so far away from your world, versus your family, and where you live, and how you live and your diction and your language, and your culture and your music. If none of that is in poetry when it’s introduced to you, why would it not feel like a foreign concept?
I want to write poems that my grandmother might enjoy. Or even my father with an eighth grade education, that he would hear these words and not have to run to a dictionary, or feel left out, or even be mystified by the fact that he doesn’t recognize the people being talked about, the places being talked about. But if he hears that work, and it sounds just like some of his favorite music on the radio, without the music, that he’s not lost. If you think of poetry as a cousin to say, country music, or the blues, and you enjoy those two art forms, you can enjoy poetry.
Douglas: Explain to me, the genesis of roots of Appalachia, you’re credited with coining that term, but also the Appalachian poets. And where did all that start?
Walker: Right here in Lexington, about 1991. I have a group of friends who were meeting once a week, sharing our brand new poetry only with each other. This was before the big spoken word movement and cafes with poetry nights, that wasn’t happening at all. This was the 90s. It was even considered not a positive thing for young men to be walking around claiming to write poetry. So it was kind of a secret to most people. But we were doing it in our small group and we also started to go to public events. And we went to an event that was credited with showcasing the best writers from Appalachia. We all enjoyed the event. And I came home and I looked up the definition of Appalachia and in my dictionary in 1991, the definition of Appalachia said, “white residents of the mountainous regions of Appalachia.” And it shook me because I immediately thought, “What are you if you aren’t white?”
So I wrote a poem that kind of teased out that question at the very end of the poem. I wrote the line, “Imagine being an Affrilachian poet.” And I brought it back to my group that next week to share, and I fell in love with the word and we decided the same evening to name ourselves. We’d been meeting for about a year, unnamed and not even thinking of ourselves as a group, but we decided in that moment that there was something about the word that was electric enough to make us feel something, so we named ourselves The Affrilachian Poets.
About 10 years later, the dictionary, based on the amount of use that was happening with the word and a region, picked it up and decided it was a legitimate word. In the dictionary definition, it limited membership to descendants of Africa and African Americans living in the region. Our group from the very beginning was not all Black. We were multicultural. We had Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans and Lebanese descendants. So the multicultural, multi-gender, multi-age, very eclectic group of writers who just love poetry and writing, and enjoy proximity, and kinship groups and opportunities to work and live in and out there, the region of Appalachia. That’s the definition of the word, and the group. And even today, we’re still active as a group of writers presenting. We made a couple of documentaries, all of us either teaching or administrating. But we’re all definitely still writing books. And the group has grown from that small group of about a dozen to about 40 plus members, almost 30 years later. And we’re still creating and still feeling like a family.
Douglas: You’ve written books and essays, both with poetry and prose, but let’s talk about this children’s book. Why was it important for you to develop a children’s book?
Walker: People want to try to find Affrilachia on a map and I’ve always insisted that Affrilachia is an idea, not a geographical specific region. It is bigger than the ARC [Appalachian Regional Commission] definition of designated counties that make up Appalachia, particularly those communities that feature out migrants from the region, like Cincinnati, which probably has the largest number of Appalachian out migrants. I lived there for a while. People have these ideas about the space between rural and urban, but you almost never hear about the urban connections.
I’ve been telling stories about the region that really focused on the diversity and been struck by the fact that when you consider luminaries like Booker T. Washington and even John Henry stories, or Henry Louis Gates, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Bill Withers, they’re always discussed separately from the space they come from. People almost never connect them to the region of Appalachia. What I wanted to do was do a children’s book that also educated the people who read to children because most of the stuff in the book, their parents don’t know this information either.
Douglas: The glossary really impressed me for that reason. I mean, I knew most of the names, but I had no idea that Chadwick Boseman or Nina Simone were from the region. I recognize these people and their significance, culturally, but had no idea that they were Appalachian, or that they had Appalachian roots at all.
Walker: To me, I think that’s really important. And that it challenges the “why.” It blows the negative caricatures out the water. If you hold up Snuffy Smith and the Beverly Hillbillies, and then say, Chadwick Boseman, Jesse Owens, Nina Simone, in the same sentence, it is hard to say, well, I know who lives there. And it’s hard to leave out a group of people who’ve been there since the beginning, as well. It’s not a traditional children’s book in the sense that children read it and be hypnotized by the sound of the ABC’s. It’s more of a kind of subtle way to teach important history and to challenge people’s notion of what Appalachia is and and what Appalachia might feel like and look like.
Douglas: Who do you want to read the book?
Walker: Grandmothers, parents, high school students, middle school students, you know, young people who are literate enough to read on their own. And even people who just enjoy beautiful images, to flip through the book and enjoy the images, and then ask questions of whoever was there with you. I hope it’s a multi-generational experience. Every family should own one of these books, in my opinion.
Cynthia Rylant has transported readers from around the world to Appalachia for decades, beginning with her first children’s book in 1982.
Since then, Rylant has written more than 100 books, ranging from picture books and easy readers to chapter books and novels. Her books have won Caldecott and Newbery awards.
Some of Rylant’s books, including her 1982 debut, “When I Was Young in the Mountains,” were based on her life growing up in southern West Virginia.
While she has a lot of happy memories from her early childhood, Rylant also experienced tough times. She was raised by a single mom, who had to leave her young daughter so she could attend nursing school. For those years, Rylant lived with her grandparents in Raleigh County, in the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams recently interviewed Rylant about her childhood in the state and how it shaped the rest of her life.
***Editor’s Note: The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
Rylant: It was so lovely living [in Raleigh County].
For one thing, it was just so quiet. The world has such a noisy place these days. Just to hear the cowbells out in the field, and just to hear the birds singing in the morning, and be able to be free and be outside all day.
People were quiet. They were very dignified, and took such good care of their homes. They had beautiful gardens, and canned all their vegetables.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Rylant was inspired by time time she spent with her grandparents for her book “When I Was Young in the Mountains.”
I was very protected. I never felt afraid when I was there.
Adams: Was “When I Was Young in the Mountains” based on your own experience living with your grandparents?
Rylant: Yes, everything in that book is true.
The book was illustrated by an artist named Diane Goode. In her art, she placed the time of the story much earlier. It looks to be in the late 1800s the way that people are dressed. Actually, the time that I lived in Cool Ridge was in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s.
Adams: The page that fascinates my kids is the image of the children swimming in the pond with the snakes. I think they find it so fascinating because in every other book, people tend to be scared of snakes. Your book just depicts people co-existing with them, and that squares with their own lives. Did you swim with snakes then?
Rylant: Oh, yeah. And in the book, I talked about us draping a long snake across our necks for a photograph. We did that. I’ve got one photograph with my mom and I think the same snake. We’d never seen one quite that long. She’s sitting on the hood of a car, and a dead snake is draped across the hood of the car behind her.
We were so used to nature. I’m more nervous walking in the woods now than when I was five years old.
Adams: You stayed with your grandparents for several years. What happened next?
Rylant: During those years I lived with my grandparents, I was very protected and had happy days.
But I was shattered when my mother would come and visit for a short period of time, and then leave again and go back to nursing school. I have a memory of standing in the yard and watching the car take her away to the Greyhound bus station, and crying so hard and my grandmother leading me back into the house gently and putting me into her bed covering me up, just crying my little eyes out.
So the most joyful thing was that my mother finally finished school, and she came back permanently and got a job at a hospital in Beckley. She found us a little three-room apartment with an indoor bathroom, which I had not experienced before.
This was in Beaver, West Virginia, and I began my more urban life. In Beaver, I could walk to the grocery store and a little drugstore and little post office. I could ride my bike on paved roads. That was a whole new world for me. Beaver gave me all kinds of stories, too.
Adams: When she graduated high school, Cynthia Rylant went to college in Charleston and later got her master’s degree in English at Marshall University in Huntington. That’s where she met a community of like-minded people who were into books and literature.
Rylant: I didn’t write creatively, all through high school and college. In a strange way, I wasn’t worthy of it. Like that could never be something that I could do.
I finished graduate school, and was still living in Huntington. I waitressed for a while, and then somebody suggested I try to get a job at the public library. I applied, even though I’d never really used a public library before, and I got a job as a clerk making minimum wage.
I was assigned to the children’s department. That’s where I first started reading children’s books. And that changed my life.
First of all, I was just kind of astonished that they were all so beautiful. I’d never seen picture books before. I had come out of graduate school in English. And the writing in those books was just incredibly moving to me — much more than the writing that I had studied in all my classes.
Adams: Was that what inspired you to pick up the pen and start writing?
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Rylant’s book was illustrated by Diane Goode, who placed the time of the story in the late 1800s.
Rylant: When I was working in the children’s department, I used to just carry home bags full of children’s books to read. Something told me to pick up a pen, a pad of paper. One night, I sat down and I wrote the line, “When I was young in the mountains, Grandfather came home in the evening covered with the black dust of a coal mine.”
I just kept writing and within a few minutes, I’d written my first picture book, “When I Was Young in the Mountains.”
Adams: How did you then write your second book? How did you go from that one book to dozens of books?
Rylant: When I got the first book accepted, I remember sort of trying to bargain with God, and saying, ‘If you just let me have one more book accepted, I’ll be happy. I’ll just be happy with two books.’
I decided to stay in Appalachia for my writing. My second book was called “Miss Maggie.” It was again about a woman I knew, who lived in a log house near one of those cow pastures. She wore the old Appalachians bonnet. She chewed tobacco, and there was a rumor that a black snake lived in the house with her. My grandparents used to take Miss Maggie to the grocery store, back and forth. I wrote a story about her, and that was my second accepted book.
I continued with these Appalachian stories, and my third book was called ‘The Relatives Came.’ Again, that’s a true story about the relatives of Virginia traveling over the mountains to come see us in West Virginia.
It all just flowed. I think it was just my calling. I think we all find in our lives, a time when we’re doing things right and natural, no matter what that is, you know, many different things. But we just feel like we’re in the right place, doing the right thing. That’s what I felt when I started writing picture books.
Adams: You said that your intention was to remain in Appalachia and continue to write what led you to leave?
Rylant: I just couldn’t find a job. I had a master’s degree in English, but it wasn’t a Ph.D. in English, and I wasn’t ready to or even able to go to get further education to become a college teacher. I didn’t have an education degree to be a public school teacher. I was intimidated by the idea of being a student teacher.
What I ended up doing was going to Ohio, and I was able to get another assistantship, and I got a library degree. I ended up working in an Ohio library, because when I wanted to come back to West Virginia, back to Huntington, there weren’t any jobs available.
I ended up just living in Ohio for many years, and never moved back to West Virginia. Although my family, of course, stayed there. I’m in my 60s now, and all my adult life, I’ve made a trip to West Virginia at least once a year.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Adams: Now you live in the Pacific Northwest?
Rylant: Yeah. I do.
Adams: What led you there?
Rylant: A lot of people do this so-called midlife crisis that happens around the late 30s, early 40s. People think they just got to do something different.
I can’t really explain to you why I felt I needed to come to the Pacific Northwest at that time. But I had visited Seattle once, and was just fascinated by this part of the country, and the whole Puget Sound region. It’s kind of mysterious and so green. I just got it into my head when I was close to 40 that I wanted to move out here.
This was not really my design as probably God’s design. I just thought it was my idea.
When we look at our lives, and we look at the choices we’ve made, I often think of all the mistakes I’ve made, and the wrong turns I took, and the people I shouldn’t have been with, and people I should have been with that I wasn’t — you know, things like that.
You look back and think, ‘Oh, I wish I could change this or that,’ but you have to follow the thread. You have to say, where does that mistake you think you’re making take you? And invariably, when I look back at my thread, it took me someplace good.
When I got out here to the Pacific Northwest, many times I would think, maybe I should go back. But, I have a little granddaughter born just three years ago. I tell myself that long thread you were following led to her. She wouldn’t have been made had I not come out here.
And so we have to think that when we’re making our choices, we’re being guided. We’re being pulled towards something that we don’t even understand.
Author Katie Fallon was inspired, in part, by her own children to write the book, Look, See the Bird! In the book, Fallon writes about children from different parts of the world. It’s an imaginary trip across parts of the world, and the perspectives of migratory birds help guide the story.
Fallon is a board member with the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a non-profit group that’s dedicated to preserving the region’s wild birds. She’s currently teaching non-fiction writing classes at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
In this interview, Inside Appalachia host Jessica Lilly talk with Katie about the book she co-authored called, Look, See the Bird!
The children’s book shares voices from kids observing birds in different countries. It also includes a scene from Cooper’s Rock in West Virginia that was inspired by an actual visit with her own children.
“So Cooper’s Rock State Forest is right up the road from us where we live outside of Morgantown,” Fallon said. “So we go to Cooper’s Rock very very often especially in the fall in the summertime. And when you sit at the overlook and watch that cheat river far below there are often Broadway hawks that fly just off the overlook.”
Fallon says she wanted to encourage children to observe birds because birds often go overlooked and it’s a great way to get outside.
“I think that sometimes in our everyday lives we forget that we are part of an ecosystem also,” Fallon said. “We’re not just you know walking around looking at our phones we’re participating in an ecosystem with everything we do. And I think that birds can help connect us to that.”
By including characters that are from different countries, the book introduces different cultures to children.
“We wanted to show that birds are really the connection between kids from different cultures kids who speak different languages, kids who might never get to meet each other in real life,” Katie said.
Fallon also wanted to raise awareness about the rare birds in West Virginia.
“Cerulean warbler is the fastest declining songbird in North America and we have a lot of them here in West Virginia,” she said. “We have more breadings and warblers than any other state. Cerulean spend the winters on coffee farms. They use coffee farms in Central America during migration and then some of them end up spending the winter on coffee farms in Colombia and Venezuela. Unfortunately since the 70’s a lot of primary forests in the tropics has been cut down to make way for coffee.”
Katies says she hopes the book sparks an interest in conservation, migration and culture for children.
Author Meredith Sue Willis was born in Clarksburg on May 31, 1946. She was raised in Shinnston, where both her parents were educators. After graduating from Shinnston High School, she attended Bucknell University for two years before dropping out to become a VISTA volunteer. She later earned undergraduate and graduate degrees and became an artist-in-residence in New York public schools and in New Jersey. She was also adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Willis has authored four books on writing: Personal Fiction Writing, Blazing Pencils, Deep Revision, and Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel. All are used widely in classrooms.
She’s written three children’s books: The Secret Super Powers of Marco, Marco’s Monster, and Billie of Fish House Lane. Her adult fiction, which is mainly set in West Virginia, includes A Space Apart, Higher Ground, Only Great Changes, Quilt Pieces, In The Mountains of America, Trespassers, Oradell at Sea, Dwight’s House and Other Stories, The City Built of Starships, and Out of the Mountains.
Meredith Sue Willis lives in New Jersey with her husband.
