We All Live Downstream: Writings about Mountaintop Removal June 11, 2009

I’m excited to have my work appear in the book anthology We All Live Downstream alongside work by:

• Earl Hamner (creator of the Waltons)
• Ashley Judd
• Robert Kennedy Jr.
• Wendell Berry
• Bobbie Ann Mason
• Ann Pancake
• Jean Ritchie
• Silas House
• Hal Crowther
• Jeff Biggers
• Denise Giardina
• Pamela Duncan
• Many other fine writers and performers.

We All Live Downstream is a multi-genre anthology of noted authors and young writers speaking out against mountaintop removal coal mining. There is the fifth-grader who vows to fight the destruction until he’s “laid in the ground,” the college student who recalls her shock and heartbreak at first seeing a mountaintop removal site, the best-selling novelist who believes that “to destroy mountains is to spit in the face of God.” This startling collection includes writers from 17 states and features material from celebrated artists and activists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry, Earl Hamner, Ashley Judd, Silas House, Denise Giardina, Erik Reece, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bob Edwards, Penny Loeb, Hal Crowther, Jean Ritchie, Terry Tempest Williams, Jeff Biggers, Ann Pancake, George Ella Lyon, Ben Sollee and many more. Edited by journalist & activist Jason Howard (coauthor of Something’s Rising), this book presents a rallying chorus of dissent against a reckless industry and drives home the point that energy (particularly domestic coal) is everyone’s issue … not only at the source but all the way “downstream.”

Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006). June 4, 2009

Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006).

For more information about Appalachian Heritage, Berea College’s literary journal, and to order back issues, visit http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/

by Neva Bryan

“Where there’s loggers, there’s bound to be sawmill boys.”

Sawmill boys. I liken them to trees because they possess two kinds of beauty. The first kind is in their natural freedom, the beauty of a tree standing tall with its brothers. But when the sawmill gets a hold on them, they develop a second kind of beauty, the kind that comes from being cut down, sawed up, and spit out. Rough cut, splintered, shaped for utility.

A sawmill boy can take a 4X4 between the eyes that’ll lay him out flat on his ass and then get back up to finish his workday. They all wear a strange cologne of diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and cigarette smoke. Sawdust trails them like breadcrumbs for the lost. They’re lean, with knotty arms and hard faces, but their eyes are dreamy.

Wendell, my ex-husband, was a sawmill boy. I remember the first time I saw him, more than five years ago. He was coming out of the ABC store with a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under his arm. He had that sawmill boy look – lean and hard – but he was dressed to party: Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt, faded jeans, black and silver biker boots.

His fair skin was ruddy from working outside all day. When I got close I saw that his knuckles were skinned, scabbed, and scarred . . . a perpetual state for sawmill boys, I learned later. At least he had all his fingers.

When he cocked his head at me and grinned, I saw a slight gap between his two front teeth. As he smiled, his eyes darkened from coffee-and-cream to pure black liquid. His hair was the color of my Granny’s apple butter; I thought how sweet it would be to free it from its tight ponytail and watch it tumble down around me. Just looking at him made me hungry.

Before I knew it, Wendell and I sat on the bank of the Clinch River sharing Jack and naming stars. By turns he was raunchy and sweet, sad and funny, goofy and sexy. I gave up to him with an immediacy – an urgency – that was quite foreign to me. It seems I had taken a 4X4 right between the eyes. Wendell Kennedy was a splinter who had worked his way straight into my heart.

Neva’s Poem to be read on WRFL-FM Lexington May 15 May 11, 2009

Listen to Accents every Friday @ 2pm EST on WRFL 88.1 FM Lexington or stream live from wrfl.fm.

This Friday, May 15, they’ll be reading a poem of mine, “Anoint Me.”

Also, the guest that day will be poet Frank X. Walker.

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer is the host.

Let me know what you think!

Where You Can Find St. Peter’s Monsters May 2, 2009

St. Peter’s Monsters is available at independent booksellers, including Wise County Historical Society, Wise, VA; Zazzy’Z, Abingdon, VA; Cozy Corner, Whitesburg, KY; Binding Time Cafe, Martinsville, VA; Joseph Beth, Lexington, KY; Appalachian Arts Center, Wardell, VA; and Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore, Big Stone Gap, VA.

It is available on-line at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, and Target, as well as in some stores in these chains. It is available through nevabryan.com.

You may order a signed copy via snailmail. Send $14.00 (plus .70 tax if in VA) plus $3.99 for shipping and handling to: Brighid Editions, PO Box 1428, Saint Paul, VA 24283.

Books are always available during the author’s appearances. See her calendar for an event near you.

Publication Date: February 2009

Price: $14.00

Length: 294 pages

Cover Style: 6″X9″ Color Trade Paperback

ISBN: 978-0-615-26391-5

LCCN:  2008910946

St. Peter’s Monsters is the story of Peter Sullivan, a homesick college student teetering on the edge of alcoholism. He discovers bigger monsters than the bottle when a mysterious young woman enters his life. Wren has fled Peter’s beloved Appalachian hills and now he must find out why she is keeping secrets about her past.

As they turn to each other for comfort, they are linked together in a chain of love, tragedy, and murder . . . a chain that binds them when they find themselves back in the haunted shadows of the Virginia coalfields.

St. Peter’s Monsters December 15, 2008

Brighid Editions is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of St. Peter’s Monsters, Neva Bryan’s debut novel. Readers have praised Ms. Bryan for writing with an “evocative sense of place and a gentle style” and creating “delicately drawn” characters.

 

St. Peter’s Monsters is the story of Peter Sullivan, a homesick college student teetering on the edge of alcoholism. He discovers bigger monsters than the bottle when a mysterious young woman enters his life. Wren has fled Peter’s beloved Appalachian hills and now he must find out why she is keeping secrets about her past. As they turn to each other for comfort, they are linked together in a chain of love, tragedy, and murder . . . a chain that binds them when they find themselves back in the haunted shadows of the Virginia coalfields.

 

To be included on our e-mail list for updates on the book’s publication, and for a brief excerpt, please contact brighideditions@gmail.com.

 

Brighid Editions is an independent literary publisher dedicated to the promotion of strong storytelling. We publish fiction that illuminates the human condition while entertaining the reader.

Appalachia, Man: Can you dig it? May 1, 2008

APPALACHIA, MAN: CAN YOU DIG IT?

 

 

Turn a furrow and find

arrowheads, iridescent beetles,

pop bottles, decapitated dolls,

carbide lamps.

 

Dig deeper.

 

Beneath Wal-Mart’s parking lot

find the wisp of a tobacco field.

At the DQ, catch the milky ghost

of a farmer’s wife.

 

Look beyond Cracker Barrel,

the car dealership,

the call center,

the prison.

 

Find hard-faced boys

with anthracite eyes,

who were too wise too soon,

schooled in hell’s shafts,

seams and slack.

 

Dig deeper.

 

Don’t discard the shards.

 

Can you dig it?

 

 

“Appalachia Man: Can You Dig It?” A! Magazine for the Arts, vol. 15, no. 4. (April 2008).

 

http://artsmagazine.info/

Sawmill Burning April 4, 2008

SAWMILL BURNING  

Butterflies burn in the purple night.

Gossamer blisters twist,

Fall on our faces,

But it’s only luminous ash

That clings to our wet skin.

In the dark a single spark brings it all down.

Full fuel tank roars a dragon’s wrath.

Sawdust and sheet metal meld.

Flames incinerate uncut logs:

Futile death of trees.

My husband sees his life’s work

Flit and fly across the sky

In unbearable embers.

Glowing orange . . .

Then grey . . .

Now white.

Will it melt on my tongue, like snowflakes?

Or taste salty, like tears?

His sawmill burned three days.

Richard brought me its fused beauty:

A lump of metal and wood,

Silver, porous as coral, eerie.

It sits on a shelf,

Reminds us of destruction.

And resurrection.

     

“Sawmill Burning.”  Jimson Weed, vol. XXV, new series vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 2006). 2006   

Appalachian Writers Association James Still Award for Poetry, Third Place.