Silas House

And another author told me that he's like...

It's a guy named Silas House, who's a very big author regionally, and especially here in Kentucky where I'm at.

He said, "That is not good at all." And this is before the pandemic this happens.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Rash, who's one of my great heroes, won it.

Barbara Kingsolver won it.

Silas House, who I mentioned, won it.

Robert Gipe won it, and the list goes on, uh, s- some really big names.

So great books.

I want to talk about my friend Silas House, a fellow Appalachian, has a new novel coming out, I think, like next week.

It's called The Tulip Poplars from Algonquin.

It's a great novel.

Thanks for joining us.

This week, Silas House on his new novel, The Tulip Poplars.

Eugene Poole on turning out quilts featuring life-size depictions of black Kentucky Derby jockeys.

And Jamie Kilburn, assistant professor of theater at Union Commonwealth University, on their coming season.

And so I did sacrifice that part of myself, mostly because I had been taught that, you know, by the church I was brought up in, by the culture, all that.

So on one hand, I'm of the mind of, you know, I do think that I don't believe in being self-centered and being selfish, but I also don't believe that a person should ever have to sacrifice themselves and who they truly are just to benefit somebody else's feelings.

Silas House is the author of The Tulip Poplars, forthcoming October 13th from Algonquin Books.

Silas, thank you so much for joining us.

But in my head, I was like, if I think of a Kentucky writer, I'm thinking of, you know, Crystal Wilkinson.

I'm thinking of Silas House.

I'm, you know, I'm thinking of these people that, um, you know, I'm thinking Barbara Kingsolver.

Yeah.

Um, well, no, because, look, I'm standing on the shoulders of Harriet Arno and Robert Penn Warren and m- Bobby Ann Mason and Wendell Berry and, uh, so many others have done this before me, and so many others are doing it now.

Silas House is a, is a, is, is, is a great, great Appalachian writer.

He has a novel coming out same week as mine, The Tulip Poplars, which is a, a fabulous novel.

Um, I, because I live here, you know, I'm in this community of Appalachian writers, I don't feel like I'm doing this alone-

Next week, The Tulip Poplar is the

latest novel from Silas House.

I wanted to write about Appalachia as it's rarely seen.

I wanted it to be a place of diversity.