Panel Discussion moderated by Matt Distel on Southern Democratic

12:00PM – 1:30PM

Panel Discussion moderated by Matt Distel with Adam Denney (contributing author, Storytelling in Queer Appalachia), Robert Gipe (author, illustrated novel: Trampoline), David La Spina (co-founder, ROMAN NVMERALS Press), Roger May (Director of Artistic Programs – Appalshop – Whitesburg, KY).

Robert Gipe won the 2015 Weatherford Award for outstanding Appalachian novel for his first novel Trampoline. His second novel, Weedeater, was published in 2018. His third novel, Pop, was published in 2021. All three novels are published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, the trilogy won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. From 1997 to 2018, Gipe directed the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College Appalachian Program in Harlan. Gipe is founding producer of the Higher Ground community performance series, and has served as a script consultant for the Hulu series Dopesick and a producer on the feature film The Evening Hour. Gipe resides in Harlan County, Kentucky. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Roger May is an Appalachian American photographer and writer based in Alum Creek, West Virginia. He is the Director of Artistic Programs for Appalshop. He was born in the Tug River Valley on the West Virginia and Kentucky border, in the heart of Hatfield and McCoy country. His work explores the complicated history of place, faith, and identity in the coalfields. In 2014, he founded the crowdsourced Looking at Appalachia project. He lectures about his work and about the visual representation of Appalachia.

David La Spina is a photographer based in Germantown, New York, and the director of the architectural photo agency Esto. He also moonlights as the Director of Photography for Metrograph’s magazine and a co-founder of the cooperative photography imprint ROMAN NVMERALS. Currently teaching at SUNY New Paltz, David has also taught at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, FIT, Pratt Institute, and served as a visiting artist at The Cooper Union. His exhibition Viewshed is on display at Meridian in Hudson, NY. He holds an M.F.A. from Yale School of Art (2009), and his work has appeared in Spaces Corners, Places Journal, Blind Spot, The New York Times Magazine, and Port Magazine.

Adam Denney is a conceptual designer, storyteller, and producer whose work plays within failure, phenomena, and the macabre. They are a contributing author to ‘Storytelling in Queer Appalachia’ (2020), an anthology examining Appalachian queerness, identity, and meaning-making. Their lyrical essay, ‘A Drowning in the Foothills,’ traces the queer uncanny across the histo-mythology of Lake Cumberland in Southeastern, Kentucky – a theme they are currently adapting into a horror film.

This event is free and open to the public.