The Mountains Are My Bones

What does it mean to belong to a place that has never quite let you go? The Mountains Are My Bones is a literary collection of poems, short stories, and essays rooted in Appalachia and the people, places, memories, and stories that shape a life there. Moving between poetry and prose, these pieces explore Appalachian speech and identity, family traditions, church culture, ordinary beauty, grief, coal and labor, abandoned places, cemeteries, folklore, haunting, survival, and hope. Some are drawn from lived experience; others are fictional, folkloric, or imagined. Together, they reflect an Appalachian tradition in which a story can be remembered, embellished, inherited, and still somehow remain true. Appalachia emerges here not as a picturesque backdrop or a collection of stereotypes, but as a living place: complicated, humorous, beautiful, wounded, stubborn, changing, and deeply rooted. The mountains hold family histories. Front porches become places where hard truths are spoken. Old roads carry the memory of people who left. The dead remain present in names, stories, graves, and the habits of those who survived them. At its heart, The Mountains Are My Bones is about inheritance—not only what we receive from the people and places that raised us, but what we decide to carry forward. For readers of Appalachian literature, contemporary poetry, regional storytelling, folklore, family history, and literary explorations of home, memory, grief, identity, and belonging.