Willie Carver and Natalie Sypolt join us to share readings from their new books.

We are excited to welcome Appalachian authors Willie Carver and Natalie Sypolt to our Squirrel Hill store to discuss their new books. They will be joined in conversation by Jody DiPerna. Following the talkm there will be time for Q&A with the audience and book signing.

About Willie Carver:

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is an Appalachian author, advocate, educator, and past Kentucky Teacher of the Year. His writing has appeared in a number of publications, including Appalachian Journal, the Louisville Review, Southern Humanities, Good River Review, and Salvation South. His debut collection, Gay Poems for Red States, was featured on Good Morning America and named a Book Riot Best Book, a Top Ten Over the Rainbow Book by the American Library Association, and a Whippoorwill Honor Book. A Stonewall Honor award recipient, Carver lives with his husband and three cats in rural Kentucky.

Book: Tore All to Pieces

About Natalie Sypolt:

Natalie Sypolt is the author of The Sound of Holding Your Breath. Her writing has appeared in Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Superstition Review, Paste, Willow Springs Magazine, and The Kenyon Review Online. Sypolt is the winner of the Glimmer Train New Writers Contest, the Betty Gabehart Prize, the West Virginia Fiction Award, and the Still fiction contest. She is associate professor of English at Pierpont Community & Technical College and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association.

Book: If Only the Rain Would Come

About the conversation partner:

Jody DiPerna is a writer and award-winning journalist in Pittsburgh. Her forthcoming book, All We Have Is Each Other, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky in early 2027. All We Have Is Each Other is both reported and memoir, a ramble along the mountains to explore writing and book culture in Appalachia and the ways mountain people hold our writers in sacred space. It is also an examination of the importance of books in creating vibrant, healthy communities everywhere.