S5 Ep. 2: The Country Roads Ahead: Julia Elliott and DaMaris B. Hill Consider the Future of Rural Writing

fiction/non/fiction

Novelist Julia Elliott and poet and writer DaMaris B. Hill join hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to consider the writing and face of rural America—particularly as it might look 30 years from now. First, Elliott talks about growing up as an outsider in her own South Carolina hometown, and reads from her debut novel The New and Improved Romie Flutch. Then, Hill, who was born in West Virginia, speaks to the diversity of rural spaces and reads a historical poem, “Beloved Weirdo,” from her forthcoming poetry collection Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood. Hill also speaks about judging the Maya Angelou Book Award.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Hayden Baker and Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected readings:

DaMaris B. Hill

• A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland
• The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland
• Breath Better Spent

Julia Elliott

• The New and Improved Romie Futch
• The Wilds

Others:

• Toni Morrison
• Gail Jones
• Octavia Butler
• Crystal Wilkinson
• Nikki Finney
• Denise Low
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• Frank O’Hara
• Lucille Clifton
• Angela Davis
• “Talking to Maya Angelou’s Son About the New Award Named in Her Honor” by Anne Kniggendorf
• Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo
• Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
• Sometimes I Never Suffered by Shane McCrae
• The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
• Our Lies: Jenny Offill and James Plath on Conspiracy Theories in History and Literature (Season 4, Episode 8 of Fiction/Non/Fiction)
• Airships by Barry Hannah
• Geronimo Rex by Barry Hannah
• Westworld
• Paul West
• “The New and Improved Romie Futch” New York Times review by Lincoln Michel
• Carson McCullers
• George Saunders
• Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
• Leonora Carrington
• Meat Racket by Christopher Leonard
• Hunter S. Thompson
• David Cronenburg
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• Langston Hughes
• Alice Walker
• Latino Writers Collective - Home
• Frank X Walker - Affrilachian Poet, Educator, Author of Black Box, Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York, and Affrilachia

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