Magazine. Poetry. Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. APPALACHIA UNDER THIRtY - VOLUME 19: PINE MOUNTAIN SAND & GRAVEL, is comprised of work of writers under thirty, and those writers over thirty, reflecting on the experiences of their under thirty lives. These poems, stories, essays, and memoirs, by turns, angry, pensive, and joyful, are a wealth of writing reflective of the work being done in this, the second generation of the Appalachian literary...
Heartbreak Tree is a poetic exploration of the intersection of gender and place in Appalachia. "There is a road, but the road is still inside you, " the mature Hansel tells the girl she was, encouraging her: "You are trying. Remember." This book does the work of that remembering, honoring the responsibility of the poet to speak the forbidden stories of her own and other women's lives.
Palindrome, Hansel's sixth collection, is brave and brilliant. The vision of its title (a word that spells itself in both directions) infuses the whole with understanding that, as she was her mother's daughter, so she has become mother to the child who is her mother suffering dementia. Whether writing in fixed forms, free forms, or from her mother's written memories, Hansel creates a way to bear her readers, her mother, and herself though this...
