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Writing Queer Appalachian Romance Helped Me …
put the two halves of my identity back together
After decades feeling sundered from my West Virginia roots, writing gay romances set in my home state allows me to reimagine my home state as a queer utopia.
Like a lot of other queer folks from Appalachia, I’ve long had a vexed relationship with my home region. I love those hills and hollers, and I love the people who live there–in all of their stubbornness and kindness, their gruffness and tenderness — but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I also find them absolutely infuriating at times. Moreover, no matter how much I often yearn to move home, no matter how much there will always be a part of me that wants to live there, I can’t shake the awareness of just how impossible the dream has become in the 21st century.
The hard right turn of states like West Virginia, where I was born and raised, makes it increasingly difficult for queer folks to find a home there.
For a very long time, particularly in the wake of 2016, I essentially only went home to visit my parents, cutting myself off from most of my Appalachian identity, mostly in an attempt to save myself from the heartache that comes from knowing the majority of people in your home state — including in your own family — either want you to not exist or at the very…
