Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio
includes some of the best regional poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from forty contemporary writers, both established and up-and-coming. The wide range of material from authors such as David Baker, Don Bogen, Michelle Burke, Richard Hague, Donald Ray Pollock, and others, offers the reader a window into daily life in the region. The people, the landscape, the struggles, and the deepest undercurrents of what it means to be from and of a place are revealed in these original, deeply moving, and sometimes shocking pieces.
The book is divided into four sections: Family & Folks, The Land, The Grind, and Home & Away, each of which explores a different aspect of the place that these authors call home. The sections work together beautifully to capture what it means to live, to love, and to die in this particular slice of Appalachia. The writing is accessible and often emotionally raw;
Every River on Earth
invites all types of readers and conveys a profound appreciation of the region's character. The authors also offer personal statements about their writing, allowing the reader an intimate insight into their processes, aesthetics, and inspirations. What is it to be an Appalachian? What is it to be an Appalachian in Ohio? This book vividly paints that picture.
David Lee Garrison
I look out the window and see through the neighbor's window to an Amish buggy where three children are peeping back, and in their eyes I see the darkness of plowed earth hiding seed. Wind pokes the land in winter,
trying to waken it, and in the melting snow
I see rainbows and in them every river on earth. I see all the way to the ocean, where sand and stones embrace each falling wave and reach back to gather it in.