WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. — West Liberty University welcomed author Silas House for the annual Hughes Lecture Series. This event took place on April 4th, at 4 p.m. in the Boyle Conference Room.
House, who traveled from Lexington, Kentucky, is the author of seven novels —“Clay’s Quilt,” “A Parchment of Leaves,” “The Coal Tattoo,” “Eli the Good,” “Same Sun Here,” (co-authored with Neela Vaswani), “Southernmost,” and “Lark Ascending.” House also has a book of creative nonfiction — “Something’s Rising,” co-authored with Jason Howard, as well as three plays.
West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman started the lecture by introducing House. “I have always found his novels to contain not only plots that won’t let me go, but the most intriguing characters that I want to know better, or people I want to know in real life. His imagery is accurate, telling, and moving,” he said.
House’s lecture was entitled “My Appalachian Story,” where he discussed his story and the Appalachian identity and culture. Additionally, he emphasized the region’s complexity that is often overlooked. “They assume I come from a place that’s simple, but there’s nothing that’s simple about Appalachia,” he said.
“Appalachia is a complex place, and I always want to honor it by putting a human face on it and exploring it in all of its complexity. I don’t want to romanticize it or villainize it— I want to tell the stories of in-between,” House added.
House left this lecture with a note on Appalachian youth. “One of the main things to remind people is that they can serve the region by staying, or they can serve the region by leaving. A lot of my students feel guilty about leaving. There’s some responsibility, it feels like, when you’re from Appalachia. I like to give students permission to do whatever is best for them,” he said.
Dr. W. Scott Hanna, assistant professor of English and creative writing coordinator in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts, coordinates the yearly Hughes Lecture. “The Hughes Lecture strives to bring current and influential writers and artists to campus, and Silas House fits that description perfectly. I have been a long-time admirer of his work and have used his novels and short stories in several of my literature classes,” said Hanna.
House has received many honors, such as the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Appalachian Book of the Year, EB White Honor Award, the Intellectual Freedom Prize, and countless others. His work has been published in several journals and anthologies, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Advocate, Time, and Oxford American.
In 2022, House was chosen for the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBTQ+ writer in the nation. Most recently, House has been awarded the 2023 Southern Book Prize in Fiction for his 2022 novel, “Lark Ascending”.
The Hughes Lecture Series is named after Dr. Raymond Hughes, a cherished professor of English at West Liberty University from 1931 to 1970. Hughes’ generous endowment gift established a fund for the series in 1978, and it has since brought over 100 authors and speakers to WLU, which is free and open to the public.
