Who is the Foreword Author? 

Doug Van Gundy

Doug Van Gundy directs the MFA writing program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in many national and international publications, including Poetry, The Guardian, and The Oxford American. He is co-editor of the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary Writing from West Virginia and author of a collection of poems, A Life Above Water, published by Red Hen Press. Doug is also a master traditional fiddler, and plays fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and harmonica in the old-time string duo, Born Old. He has won many awards for his fiddle and banjo playing. His music has also been featured on National Public Radio's Mountain Stage.

Andrea Fekete Published poet and author. Granddaughter to Mexican and Hungarian immigrant coal miners. Her MA thesis, Waters Run Wild, a novel of the WV coal mine wars describing women's children's, and immigrant's roles in the 1921 coal wars, received critical acclaim in 2010 from many publications including New Letters Magazine and American Book Review. (Sweetgum Press 2010. self-reissue Guest Room Press 2018). Fall 2024, she won Blue Earth Review’s Dog Daze CNF Summer Prize for I Am Becoming Math: Endometriosis Surgeries in 5 Parts, a flash essay from her unpublished memoir tentatively titled, Spaces I Can’t Fill: Appalachian Girl [shattered]. With Lara Lillibridge, she co-curated Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility (Cynren Press April 2019) winning the Silver for Foreword Review’s Indie Book of the Year in women’s studies. Her work often appears in journals and anthologies such as Chiron Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Kentucky Review, Montucky Review, Adirondack Review, ABZ, and books such as Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Poetry and Fiction from West Virginia among many others. (WVU Press 2017) An excerpt from her unpublished novel about a granddaughter of immigrants growing up in Buffalo Creek, Native Trees, was a finalist for 2019 Fiction of the Year in Still: The Journal. She was awarded a grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation for a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She earned her MA from Marshall University and MFA in Creative Writing from WV Wesleyan. She has taught at multiple institutions including Marshall University, Ohio University Southern, and Ashland CTC. She currently teaches writing to college students in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Eliot Parker currently teaches writing at the University of Mississippi, where he has been nominated for the Kramer Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award. He is the author of four thriller novels. A Final Call was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) in 2022 and honorable mention in thriller writing at the London Book Festival. Iin 2022, the book won second place in the BookFest Book Awards in the crime/thriller fiction category. His thriller novel, A Kinfe’s Edge, was an Amazon #1 bestseller. Snapshots won the 2021 National Indie Excellent Awards (NIEA) for short story anthology and won the PenCraft and Feathered Quill Book Awards for short story collections. His thriller novel Fragile Brilliance won the West Virginia Literary Merit Award and was a finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Association Prize (SIBA) in 2017. Eliot also and hosts the podcast program Now, Appalachia across the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network, which profiles authors, and publishers living and writing about Appalachia. He hosts the YouTube Channel “Page Break,” which reviews books, interviews authors, and explores the craft of writing and publishing industry.