Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent 2025, Dravet Syndrome, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, motherhood, poetry, The Flood, Writing
I love these lines so much, these lines and this poem Sunday Open House by my friend Angie Mimms. I feel this in my bones, this longing for hope. I love its evocation of the Emily Dickinson poem that has lived in my head for many years. Angie nurtures hope, she is a careful guardian of it. She’s been my roommate at the Appalachian Writers Workshop many times along with our friend Patsy Kisner. Angie is floodkin too, we were sharing a room in Stuckey, one of the rooming houses on campus, when the 2022 flood in Eastern Kentucky rose up in the middle of the night. Stuckey became an ark that night, sheltering lots of people and their children and pets on campus seeking higher ground. We had a kitten that belonged to musician Sarah Kate Morgan in our room that night, keeping it safe from the dogs who were in the rest of the house. I only have to close my eyes to be right back in that room with her.
A cherished memory: walking through Angie’s neighborhood with her beautiful daughter Anna blowing bubbles everywhere we went. Angie is a former newspaper journalist who has lately been writing poetry and creative nonfiction around her daughter’s struggles with Dravet syndrome, a rare and debilitating form of epilepsy. Recently she has been working on a daily devotional for Anna and others who may not move through the world like most people. I know this will be a work of hope and beauty.
Here are some links to gorgeous writing:
https://literarymama.com/articles/departments/2023/12/how-i-come-to-rely-on-your-wisdom
https://www.stilljournal.net/angie-mimms-cnf2022.php
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
An Apology: I am behind on my Advent tree posts, the last week of school before the holiday break has pretty much done me in, but I aim to catch up in the next few days.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, books, Hindman Settlement School, poetry, The Flood, Writing
and me in the first place, here,
to bury this in my heart, and now yours.
-Chain of Custody, Melissa Helton from Troublesome Rising
None of us can thank Melissa enough for the way she is adding to the legacy of the Hindman Settlement School. Since 1902 it has been a place of inspiration, respect and preservation where people have come to learn and teach and share. Melissa has helped widen their circle even more as Literary Arts Director. She started the Ironwood Studio, a writers workshop for high school students that has quickly become the life blood of many young writers. She’s expanded the weekend retreats that are my personal oases throughout the year- not sure I could get through the year without them at this point. She puts together a kick ass Appalachian Writers Workshop that exceeds expectations every year. She founded, edits and fights for the absolutely gorgeous Untelling: The Literary and Arts Magazine of Hindman Settlement School (and there really is no literary print magazine out there like it). Right this very minute she is at Winter Burrow- a very cool weekend gathering of artists, scholars, writers, musicians and community organizers that I hope to be able to attend one year, another one of her brainchildren.
She’s a remarkable poet, artist, teacher and editor. Her anthology Troublesome Rising is a powerful collection of writing and art about the 1,000 year flood of Eastern Kentucky in 2022. The Appalachian Writer’s Workshop was in midweek when it hit, water rising 20 feet in just a couple of hours in the middle of the night, scouring the narrow valleys of the region. All of us who were there were changed by that flood. We, all of us, are floodkin now.
I’m happy for the chance to express how grateful I am to Melissa for all her reclamation work- on the school archives and buildings, and for our community and our memories.
Rescue, reclamation, rebirth. XO.
Here is where you can find out about that remarkable anthology: https://hindman.org/fireside/titles/troublesome-rising/
Here’s a terrific interview:
https://www.shenandoahliterary.org/thepeak/small-town-dispatches-melissa-helton/
I love this poem- The Teenager has Gone Witchy: https://cutleafjournal.com/authors/melissa-helton
Diamine ink Molten Basalt- the blackest black .
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: Art of the Day, Hindman Settlement School, Writing, advent 2025, Appalachia, The Flood, Addiction recovery, Big Pharma, Independent bookstores, books
I’ve been a soup bean connoisseur my whole life, and I know a Luck’s bean when I taste one.
-Mandi Fugate Sheffel from The Nature of Pain
Mandi Fugate Sheffel’s nickname has become “The Appalachian Treasure” and all I can say is that it isn’t bragging if it’s true. For someone who hates the spotlight, she’s had to spend a lot of the last few years squirming in it from all the do-gooding she’s been up to- flood recovery, opening a gorgeous independent bookstore in Hazard, working with the Foundation of Appalachian Kentucky and the Appalachian Arts Alliance. That spotlight only got brighter this fall when her stunning memoir The Nature of Pain was published. I’d gotten to hear and read parts of it as it was developing, but I wasn’t prepared for how powerful it would be as a whole book. I am in awe of the courage it must have taken to write this memoir of personal and regional addiction at the height of the opioid crisis in Eastern Kentucky, ground zero for the aggressive marketing of Oxycontin. Good lord, your blood will boil reading what Purdue Pharma did to a region already victim to various extractive industries. Mandi began writing pieces of her book at Hindman Settlement School as a way to manage the grief of losing her beloved cousin whose life was destroyed by addiction. We all have addiction stories- our own or those of people we love. This book is a gut punch, but it is also full of hope and the possibility of redemption. I hope you will read it.
Mandi got the news that her book was accepted for publication by University of Kentucky Press the morning of July 27th 2022 when we were at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman. I remember how very happy she was, how very happy and celebratory we all were. What a glorious day and evening that was! But that night all the rain that ever was came pouring out of the mountains and all the creeks and rivers in multiple counties rose over 20 feet in just a couples of hours killing 45 people and destroying countless homes, schools, libraries, churches and businesses. This link will take you to a short piece Mandi wrote that manages to hold worlds of stories about it: https://hindman.org/fireside/titles/troublesome-rising/troublesome-rising-digital-anthology/reflections-mandi-fugate-sheffel/
If you want to buy her book, and I think you should, you really ought to buy it from her own bookstore. It’ll benefit independent bookstores everywhere:https://www.readspottednewt.com/
Brrr! is a sparkly blue Diamine Ink that’s perfect for this snow day home from school.
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
The Fox at Dawn 