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Huntington Celebrates 150th Anniversary by Naming Literary Laureate

In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the city of Huntington has created a Literary Laureate. The first person to hold the position is Daniel O’Malley.

Originally from Cedar Hill, Missouri, O’Malley went to graduate school at the University of Florida and then moved to Huntington in 2012 to work at Marshall, specifically teaching in the English department with a particular interest in creative writing.

He spoke with Eric Douglas about his new role.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Douglas: Are you teaching a variety of classes or just focused on creative writing?

O’Malley: I’ve taught a whole range of classes in composition, literature at the introductory level, advanced-level graduate courses, but my main area is creative writing, specifically fiction writing. That’s what I studied in graduate school. That’s the kind of writing that I do, myself.

Douglas: Tell me about your own personal writing.

O’Malley: Mainly what I’ve been focused on is short stories. I took a couple of writing workshops when I was in college and I’ve been fairly obsessed with short stories ever since. I’ve been working on a collection of stories, publishing them in literary magazines here and there. But now I have a manuscript for a collection of stories I am finishing up right now.

Douglas: Short stories are always a challenge, because just as important what you leave out is what you actually leave in the story.

O’Malley: I agree and I think sometimes it can seem strange to an outsider that a finished story is three or four pages long. But it takes quite a long time to get there. Even if I can write a first draft fairly quickly, I spend a lot of time just going back over that draft, setting it aside and coming back to it. I’ve had stories that are 1,000 words, but I’ve worked on that 1,000 words for four or five years.

Douglas: Tell me about the literary laureate program and about your vision for it.

O’Malley: My hope is to be able to emphasize the importance of literature and writing in the community. One of the first things I appreciated when I moved to Huntington in 2012 was how lively the literary community was; the number of readings and events and writers groups around town. It felt like a very nurturing community. The creation of this literary laureate position is a nice extension of that, a way to formally emphasize the importance of literature and writing in the community. One of the things I hope to do in this position is to encourage people to get involved in literature and in writing. Trying to encourage people to have a role beyond being an audience for literature and writing, to think about how they can engage in those things themselves.

There will be some activities that are specific to the sesquicentennial celebration, some public readings for myself or other writers, to coincide with other events around the city.

I’m also planning to put together a Huntington literary festival that will include public readings, but also writing workshops and a collaborative storytelling event where I’m going to try to get people at different locations around town to each contribute a sentence or a line to a story or to a long poem.

Douglas: There are a lot of people out there who would love to write. What, as the literary laureate, can you do to inspire those people who want to write and just don’t know how to get started?

O’Malley: That’s a great question. I think one of the things that this position can do, just the very existence of it, is serve as a reminder to people that they can write. It’s something they can choose to do.

You can’t develop as a writer without spending time writing. A lot of that process involves experimentation, trying, failing, trying again. But I’m not aware of any shortcuts. I think a lot of times when people are looking for advice, what they’re hoping for is some way to expedite that process. At least in my experience, it just takes time spent writing and time spent reading.

The process should be fun in some way, which isn’t to say that you’re just smiling and laughing the whole time. The process can also be rigorous, painful, and it can stir up strong emotions. But it should be something that you get immersed in, and that you feel compelled to do. And it shouldn’t just be a chore.

Douglas: Is there anything we haven’t talked about?

O’Malley: One of the things that I talked about with the people here in Huntington in my proposal for the position is creating opportunities for people to tell their own stories about Huntington, whether those are true stories or works of fiction.

I am hoping we can all get a deeper sense of the place, the community and the people through the stories that people tell.

This story is part of a series of interviews with authors from, or writing about, Appalachia.

LISTEN: Being Black In Appalachia, A Conversation With Author Crystal Wilkinson

Author Crystal Wilkinson is the 2019 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University.

Wilkinson’s second book Water Street was chosen by the West Virginia Library Commission as this year’s One Book One West Virginia common read.

Wilkinson was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1962, but she grew up in Kentucky with her grandparents Silas and Christine Wilkinson.

Her grandfather was a farmer who grew tobacco, corn and sorghum, and her grandmother worked in the homes of local schoolteachers in Casey County.

Wilkinson studied journalism at Eastern Kentucky University, and then she received her MFA degree in creative writing at Spalding University in Louisville.

Wilkinson is a member of the Affrilachian Poets founded by Frank X. Walker.

In 2000, Wilkinson wrote her first book, Blackberries, Blackberries; in 2002, she published Water Street; and in 2016 she published The Birds of Opulence.

Wilkinson is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky in the MFA in Creative Writing program.

Fantasy Author Turns Out 70+ Books From W.Va Home

Swords, sorcery, other worlds and plenty of action are staples of the fantasy book genre. Craig Halloran, from Charleston, West Virginia, has written 70 books in 10 years, taking his readers to far-off lands.

He grew up reading books like Conan the Barbarian and playing Dungeons and Dragons. When he decided to start writing books, the choice for what to write was simple.

Still, he said, he has learned several lessons along the way. Like learning that his favorite genre is actually difficult to write.

“I’ve been doing it for a while not thinking about it, but it is complicated, because you’re having to describe a lot of things people haven’t seen before,” Halloran said.

Halloran also said he makes a clear choice to avoid foul language in his books, or at least only when it is appropriate.

“I don’t want to use any modern vernacular,” he explained. “Now, I do have some books that are in a modern setting, but I just don’t want to use that language. I’m kind of like Louis L’Amour. He never used it. And people don’t really miss it, unless you’re getting into a real gritty character, and you want to go that direction. You could do it that way. But it’s not me. I’m not the kind of guy who wants to do that.”

Next up, Halloran said he is planning a dragon-based series aimed at middle grade students and up. In the beginning of 2020, he plans to release the series all at once, so readers can read them without waiting.

Halloran said he never had the discipline growing up to create like he does today, but credits being in the military with helping him develop the focus.

“Every day I write, maybe in the morning, but mostly in the evening, and most of it on the weekends. That’s my process. People are amazed by that, but even if you did just 1000 words a day, and you did it for 10 years, you’re going to have a lot, lot, lot, lot lot, of books. It’s just the way it is. I just do it,” he said.

Even after writing so many books, Halloran said he loves to hear from his readers. He has some that tell him they have read all of them.

“People say I’m their favorite author. And, you know, it’s just great honor. It keeps me going. It really gives me that push I need to keep going,” he said.

Click on the play button above to hear the whole interview.

Huntington Thriller Author Offers Advice for Writers

Best-selling author Sheila Redling, from Huntington, West Virginia, has written nine books under the pen name SG Redling. After losing her will to write, she is back on track and more books are on the way. In this interview she talks about the importance of protecting your ability to write and gives advice to writers.

Redling explained that after a fast start, writing several books, she burned out.

“I had taken a few years off writing; I’d gotten really burned out,” she said. “I had been writing when my mother was dying, and I wasn’t taking care of my writing process, which I think is something I wish somebody had warned me about that earlier.”

For Redling, the key was to find other ways to recharge her creativity. She branched out into art and even acting to find new inspiration.

“It’s just a lovely homecoming coming back to writing,” she said. “It is still my favorite thing to do in the world, which is both an important lesson for you to learn for yourself, but also for other writers to learn is don’t squander it. Don’t waste it.”

Redling’s first book, Flower Town is about a small mid-western town that is contaminated with a chemical spill. The residents are quarantined. Her other books include: The Dani Britton Series (“The Widow File” and “Redemption Key”) the Nahan series (“Ourselves” and “The Reaches”) along with stand-alone books like “Baggage,” “At Risk” and “Damocles.”

Asked to describe her favorite moment as a writer, she decided it was seeing her book in a library.

“My book was in a public library. I didn’t put it there. Anybody could come across it. Think about how many writers you came across as a kid just because you were at the library,” she said.

She explained that was the moment she felt like she had arrived as an author.

A Hanging At Cinder Bottom: Interview With W.Va. Novelist Glenn Taylor

A professional gambler named Abe Baach and his girlfriend Goldie Toothman, who owns a local brothel, are the main characters in a new novel by Glenn Taylor. The novel, called A Hanging at Cinder Bottom, is set in McDowell County’s “red light district” of Keystone during the turn of the 19th century.

Like his first novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, Glenn Taylor’s latest book weaves imagination, history and tall tales into a story that feels like it was dreamed up late at night around a campfire. During the boom days of coal, places like Keystone were said to have their fair share of shoot outs, card players and red light districts. A hundred years ago, characters came to McDowell County by horse or by train from all over the world.

Taylor is a native of Huntington, West Virginia, but his father grew up in Matewan, where a lot of those stories were told — mostly by men.

Glenn: I think as a kid growing up, you’re always going to be around uncles and other acquaintances who make jokes about folks who had “gone down to Keystone for the weekend.”

And it became clear at a certain age that what they were talking about were whorehouses, or houses of ill fame, if we want to sound a little bit more proper. I was born in 1975, and there are some who will tell you that you could still entertain that kind of notion all the way up though, maybe the 80s. And so I kind of heard about it as a kid. I don’t think I paid much attention. And of course was just innocent as could be. I’m just kidding. But I’ve heard about it for quite some time.

Roxy: Your heroes in the novel, basically take on the rich villains who run Keystone. Why’d you decide to pit these characters that have been taken advantage of against the millionaires?

Glenn: I think part of it has to do with I’m a sucker, like many readers and writers, for a good underdog story. I think I always have been. I think it maybe is generated among those of us who are born and raised in West Virginia and then who leave the state, and you kind of have an underdog mentality perhaps.

Part of it is probably also because, I’ll just go ahead and say it, I’ve never been very good at plot. And so the long con was a way for me to kind of keep myself on track. I had them take on the powers that be in a very calculated way because that helped me calculate how to write the book.

And speaking of the structure of the book, I actually had to go back in time for chapter two, all the way to 1877, to show how Abe’s father, Al Baach, first came to town from Baltimore, having only recently arrived in Baltimore from Germany. And so, here his first night in town, he’s watching Rutherford, the embalmer and so called chief of police, who has a terrible fear of snakes, towing a coffin out of town.

At midnight, drunk, he watched Rutherford trot his horse out of town with a fresh-cut coffin in tow, the rig drawing lines in the dirt. He stood in the dark with Trent, a lantern on the ground between them.

Rutherford winced at the buggy seat’s unforgiving springs. He muttered about there being not enough moonlight to see. He gave a wave as he passed below the balcony veranda of a long-roofed house. The two men perched up there did not wave in return. They leaned in slat-back chairs, their feet propped on the balustrade. They were the Beavers brothers. They liked to think they saw everything from their high covered domicile.

Trent could see their cigar tips glowing. He watched his man pass beneath. He watched Harold Beavers lean sidewise in his chair and take something from a covered basket on the porch floor.

Harold stood up clutching a pair of writhing black rat snakes. He leaned over the rail and aimed and tossed the snakes upon the passing Rutherford.

One landed on his shoulder, the other on the swell of his trail saddle. He screamed as a small child would scream and he pulled free his boots from their stirrups and leapt to the ground, where he clawed at the mud, pulling himself from the scene, panting in the high notes of a woman in labor. The Beavers brothers laughed as hard as they had in months, and so too did Henry Trent as he watched from afar. When he’d understood what he’d seen, Al Baach followed suit, chuckling uncomfortable at what evidently passed for humor in his new environs.

Rutherford stood up and drew his lengthy sidearm and shot both snakes dead where they’d slithered against the ditch wall. His horse just stood there, long since gunbroke. Rutherford did not look up at the Beavers brothers where they roared, nor did he turn to regard Henry Trent. He holstered his pistol and climbed back aboard by way of an extra-long fender, and he rode off in the quarter moon dark.

Roxy: Of course this book takes place in the early 1900s, during the boom times, And those boom years, as you said, are really gone from McDowell County and Keystone. Is this book trying to rekindle any kind of story from the past, or trying to bring some hope or revitalization to that area?

Glenn: I think so. And maybe that’s just pie in the sky type of thinking, and I certainly want to make clear that I don’t presume to know what is the best way to honor the stories of the people from the past, or the people living there now, as you said, in McDowell county. And I don’t have family from there, and I didn’t grow up there. But I suppose, I think the reason I dedicated the book to the people of McDowell County is cause I was doing a lot of thinking about what does it mean, a book dedication, I had dedicated my first two, to my wife with the first one, and to my three sons with the second one, and by the time I was writing this one I realized maybe you don’t always have to dedicate a book to family members. Maybe you can dedicate it to the people who live in the place you’re writing about.

And so though I want to be very careful not to take someone else’s experience and try and make it something that it’s not, what I hope is that the book will just spur and interest in readers to think about places that unfortunately some folks now think of as “sacrifice zones”, comfortably, as if it’s just ok that we’ve sacrificed them, because I do think that it’s such an interesting and alive place like McDowell County, which generated so much money in the coal and railroad industries to build this country, I do think it’s a little odd that they’ve been left high and dry as they have, not just by big coal, but by the public consciousness, and maybe in some way by governmental intervention and aid that hasn’t gone quite as it should have. So I just hope that it will generate some interest in general, and then people can do as they want with that interest.

Glenn Taylor is a fiction writer and he teaches creative writing at West Virginia University. His new novel is called A Hanging at Cinder Bottom.