The WCoNA Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia® recently announced the shortlist for its Book of the Year.
“This year’s shortlist celebrates four debut books, including three by first-time authors: Requiem for a Redbird by Torli Bush, Deep and Wild: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way In West Virginia by Laura Jackson, and In the Cut by Michael Lockett.
The list also recognizes award-winning fiction writer Sherrie Flick for her debut essay collection, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist.
The authors on the 2025 WCoNA Book of the Year shortlist have been honored by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and The Best American Essays. They are writers and editors for esteemed publications like SmokeLong Quarterly, Heartwood, Wonderful West Virginia, Still: The Journal, Terrain.org, and Brevity. Among them is an engineer, a former Peace Corps volunteer, a co-director of the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival, and a serious opossum lover.
Through fiction, essays, and poetry, the writers of the 2025 WCoNA Shortlisted titles traverse the mountains, rivers, hollers, and plateaus of northern Appalachia, exploring the tension, diversity, richness, and resilience of our region.
As Laura Jackson writes in her shortlisted essay collection, Deep and Wild, ‘As writers, we know it’s our job, not only to tell our stories, but to tell the stories of those who came before us, who never had a turn at the microphone.’
The authors on WCoCA’s Book of the Year shortlist have taken on that worthy responsibility. Their body of work covers a range of issues critical to our region, including land use, poverty, politics, climate change, race, and sexuality. They reshape tired tropes and highlight the diverse peoples, places, cultures, traditions, history, landscapes, and geography that define northern Appalachia as a distinct literary canon.
The 2025 WCoNA Book of the Year Shortlist
Requiem for a Redbird. Torli Bush.
Pulley Press
Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist. Sherrie Flick.
University of Nebraska Press
Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia. Laura Jackson.
Autumn House Press
Sunbury Press
ABOUT WCONA
The Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia (WCONA) brings together writers and others interested in the region’s literature to honor our distinct body of work and to enhance the craft of our authors. WCoNA is a catalyst to inspire more novels, poetry, essays, history, memoir, drama, and other modes of literary writing that represent, in some way, northern Appalachia, and so create and promote a canon of writers and writing of northern Appalachia.
At its annual conference, WCoNA presents its Book of the Year award to an author whose work captures the spirit and essence of northern Appalachia. WCoNA looks for books that stand out within their genres and other books about northern Appalachia. They seek ambitious, complex books that embody the richness of the region and represent the diverse voices that illuminate our heritage.
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