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There’s No Stopping Time
A Review of Chris McGinley’s Once These Hills by Ashley Holloway Set in 1898, Chris McGinley’s rural noir saga Once These Hills introduces the reader to life in eastern Kentucky on Black Boar Mountain, a world relatively untouched by modernization. Until things change. Right from the beginning, the reader senses the strength and fierceness of…
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My Rugby Life. My Writing Life.
By Chris McGinley I should’ve started earlier. I didn’t begin writing fiction until I was fifty. Yes, I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved so far. I’m thrilled to be included in writerly events, to exchange rejoinders with people way more talented than me–Bonnie Jo Campbell, Chris Offutt, Julia Franks, Silas House. And I’m over the…
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Love, Loss, and the Lioness
A Review of Mark Powell’s Lioness by Chris McGinley It’s rare to encounter a work with multiple, fully-developed characters, with clever and meaningful use of narrative time, and with a story that continually compels a reader forward. It’s even rarer to be able to create a sense of place that genuinely shapes characters, something formative…
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Horror in the Hills
A review of C.W. Blackwell’s Song of the Red Squire By Chris McGinley There’s a renewed interest in folk horror out there! In literature, film, and television, artists are resuscitating the sub-genre . . . or maybe it never left us. Either way, it’s popular again. Like any genre, there will always be debate about…
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Brutal and Beautiful
A REview of CHarles Dodd White’s Lambs of Men By Chris McGinley Novelist Charles Dodd White knows the Appalachian mountainside. He knows the flora, the fauna, the geography. He knows the waterways and the weather. He knows how the light hits the trees at different times of day, and the way the air of the…
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Sin & Righteousness in Appalachia
a review of Michael Amos Cody’s A Twilight Reel by Chris McGinley Michael Amos Cody’s A Twilight Reel is simply one of the finest collections of Appalachian short stories around. In its breadth, and in its subtle evocation of theme, it recalls the work of Chris Holbrook, Chris Offutt, or Ann Pancake. Indeed, the twelve…
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The Full Horizon of Loss
a review of When These Mountains Burn by David Joy review by Chris McGinley David Joy’s newest novel is about loss. It’s about the loss of loved ones, the loss of landscape, the loss of one’s ethnicity, the loss of a way of life. Really, then, it’s about the full horizon of loss. What’s…
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The Screech Owl
Fiction by Chris McGinley 1901, Black Boar Mountain, Eastern Kentucky Lydia stood under the old oak tree, close enough to see the vibration in the breast of the screech owl that sat in a hollow up the trunk. She tried to predict the timing of the bird’s eerie call, to sing out just as the…