Silas House
Board of Directors Advisory Council
Silas is an award-winning playwright, journalist and environmental activist. He serves as the NEH Chair in Appalachian studies at Berea College and on the fiction faculty at Spalding University’s MFA in creative writing program.
Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and named the 2010 Appalachian Writer of the Year by Shepherd University, Silas’ work has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Oxford American, The Louisville Review, and “New Stories from the South.” His national bestsellers include “Clay’s Quilt,” “A Parchment of Leaves,” “The Coal Tattoo,” and “Eli the Good.”
Silas has been involved in the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining since 2005, and in 2009 released “Something’s Rising,” a series of Appalachian activist profiles co-produced with Jason Howard.
Silas is a native of Kentucky and currently calls Berea home. Listen to Silas talk about his coming up in coal country: Appalachian Writer Silas House on the Double-edged Sword of Coal, W.Va. Public Broadcasting, April 2015