Writing Appalachia edited by Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd

This is it. More than a decade in the making, this 745-page tome gives us an overview of Appalachian Literature that far surpasses its predecessors, Voices from the Hills: Selected Reading of Southern Appalachia by Robert Higgs and Ambrose Manning (1975) and Appalachian Inside Out: A Sequel to Voices from the Hills by Jim Wayne Miller, Robert Higgs and Ambrose Manning (1995).  This anthology is expansive in practically every aspect. In genre, it includes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, drama, slave narrative, folklore, song lyrics, an address, a diary excerpt, testimony at a congressional hearing. and articles from periodicals. In time, it starts with "How the World Was Made," a traditional Cherokee story and ends with "Candy" a memoir that Denise Giardina has not yet finished, let alone published.            Included are 35 21st Century writers; 27 from roughly  the second half of the 20th Century; 28 from roughly the first half of the 20th Century, 6 from the 1800s and 7 from