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Hot tea is a very pleasant and beneficial beverage. Its elements produce a soothing aroma and lend comfort and well-being to the throat and body. Hot teas are a helpful drink for the body’s system. I thought I might research some of the teas in my cupboard and divulge whatContinue Reading

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**Featured Image: Barbara Allen’s Cruelty by H. M. Brock (Cropped) My maternal great-grandmother, Cora (McNeely) Goins, lived a good deal of her adult life in a coal camp, just down the road from Kentucky, in Westbourne, Tennessee. As the coal boom slowed and the company’s profits waned, the coal baronsContinue Reading

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In 2013, Delonda Anderson conducted an interview with David Madden, published in Pellissippi State Community College’s Imaginary Gardens Literary and Arts Review. The following is Part II of that interview. THE INTERVIEW – PART II   David Madden (MADDEN) – The interviewee Delonda Anderson (DA) – The interviewer   DA:  Some writers expressContinue Reading

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INTRODUCTION In 2013, Delonda Anderson conducted an interview with David Madden, published in Pellissippi State Community College’s Imaginary Gardens Literary and Arts Review. The following is Part I of that interview, with a tweaked introduction that also accredits work he has accomplished since then. On a frosty winter day, oneContinue Reading

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Written by Delonda Anderson Editor A few years ago, I attended the James Agee Conference for Literature and Arts at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee. The event broke into several workshops and sessions that mostly focused on new Appalachian talent with a smattering of old genius. During theContinue Reading

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In: Fiction, Folklore, Paranormal, Storytelling
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Grace put the top down on the old Miata and we burned the open road, our hair spinning wild as Medusa in the crisp late spring. We should travel to Monrovia, California to see Upton Sinclair’s house, she had said, and take one of those cross-country road trips on ourContinue Reading

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In: Folklore, Nonfiction, Scoundrels & Sinners, Stories of Yore
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**Warning:  Graphic Depictions of Violence in this post Have you ever met the devil in Appalachia? Alone in unnerving wooded areas day or night? The devil wears different disguises. For some, he is a brawny satyr with goat legs, bovine horns, and an arrowed pin tail. For others, the devilContinue Reading

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In: Nonfiction, Stories of Yore, Uncategorized, Wanderings, Way Back When
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The next part of our journey transports us on a cold December day to Briceville, Tennessee – just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Coal Creek. We arrive at the Cross Mountain mine almost ten years after the Fraterville mine disaster. Coal camps in Appalachia were cheerful inContinue Reading

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In: Geology, Nonfiction, Stories of Yore, Way Back When
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After the Coal Creek War, coalminers garnered a new respect, reclaimed their jobs and formed unions. Coal companies gained a skilled workforce and restructured the industry better than it was before convict-leasing. Families were relatively happy as normalcy and stability returned. Ten years after the Coal Creek War’s end, however,Continue Reading

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In: Poetry, Stories of Yore
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for Big Benny A monarch’s image flitters across the honored on that glassy, black wall, floating sideways, backward, up, down, caught up in concentric wind loops across names, nearly 60,000 etched. A person with paper scratches a son with lead. She is gray, drained, rock-wrinkled. Old, fixed medals and buttonsContinue Reading