ISSUED: 2 March 2021
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, director of Shepherd University’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities, is the featured essayist in the fall 2020 volume of “Appalachian Review” that focuses on the writing of Wiley Cash, Shepherd’s 2017 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. Cash’s work was also the centerpiece for the 10th volume of the “Anthology of Appalachian Writers” published by Shepherd and the West Virginia Center for the Book.
Shurbutt’s essay, “Wiley Cash and the Ties that Bind,” evolved from research conducted in 2017 for the Appalachian Heritage website and resources created for teachers who wished to use Cash’s book in their classrooms. This essay focused on Cash’s third novel, “The Last Ballad,” which tells the story of Ella May Wiggins, who was a union leader working with mill workers in North Carolina and was murdered by a right-wing political group in 1929 in Gastonia.
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