November Writers Can Read

This month’s Writers Can Read series will feature two Appalachian writers – novelist Jess Montgomery and poet Savannah Sipple. The event is free and open to the public and will take place on Monday, November 18 at 7 P.M. at The Inner Geek bookshop located at Pullman Square in downtown Huntington.

Jess Montgomery is the author of the Kinship Historical Mysteries. Under her given name, she is a newspaper columnist, focusing on the literary life, authors and events of her native Dayton, Ohio for the Dayton Daily News. Her first novel in the Kinship Historical Mystery series garnered awards even before publication: Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District (MCAD) Artist Opportunity Grant (2018); Individual Excellence Award (2016) in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council; John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio) in 2014. Her first novel, The Widows, is now available. Her second novel, The Hollows, will be released soon.

Savannah Sipple is the author of WWJD & Other Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), which explores what it is to be a queer woman in Appalachia and is rooted in its culture and in her body. With a beer-drinking Jesus as her wingman, she navigates this difficult terrain of stereotype, conservative Evangelicalism, and, perhaps most, shame. A writer from east Kentucky, her writing has recently been published in Southern Cultures, Split This Rock, Salon, Appalachian Heritage, Waxwing, and other places. Savannah is an Assistant Professor of English at Bluegrass Community and Technical College and a mentor in the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

The “Writers Can Read” open mic night reading series takes place on the third Monday of each month (all year) from 7:00-8:30 at The Inner Geek at Pullman Square in Huntington, West Virginia. The event features two award-winning, published authors that serve as “featured readers” to begin the event each month.