Book City ★ Roanoke

What can Appalachian fourth graders tell you about rural lives? A lot, it turns out. Rachelle Kuehl's dissertation at Virginia Tech focused on the analysis of fourth grade writing to get a better understanding of the role of reading and writing in perceptions of places. Of course long-lived Applachian stereotypes aren't true, and books and writing can go a long way in helping to rectify them. Hear more about empathy, stereotypes, self-awareness, and local pride in this episode.

Rachelle Kuehl, PhD, is postdoctoral associate at Virginia Tech and project manager of the Appalachian Rural Talent Initiative. She is a reading specialist and former elementary teacher whose articles about writing instruction, children’s literature, and teacher education have been published in such journals as the English Journal, Collection Management, Reading in Virginia, the Virginia English Journal, and the Teacher Educators’ Journal. She is coauthor of chapters in What’s Hot in Literacy? Exemplar Models of Effective Practice (2020) and the forthcoming volumes, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rural Education in the USA and Gifted Education in Rural Schools.

Learn more about the project.
Check out some of Rachelle's Papers
Bonus! See Rachelle's art.

Contemplative photographer and writer Ashley Wilson Fellers is creative on a number of fronts including poetry, painting, and photography. She's currently asking the question: "What can I do with my gifts?"

Intentionally disrupting her life is a creative jolt jointly undertaken with husband Thomas Fellers. "I am at a place where I just want to let some of what I do exist in community with other people, and serve other people, and highlight the work of other people," says Fellers.

In a conversation with Douglas Jackson, Ashley lets us in on what this period is doing for her and what we might expect next.

Find session notes at BOOK CITY ★ Roanoke.

Get more on Ashley at ashleywilsonfellers.com

Visit our sponsor Book No Further

Season two of the BOOK CITY ★ Roanoke podcast launches with a conversation with freelance journalist and local foods advocate Christina Nifong. In her profiles of Roanoke area residents, Nifong plays the cinematographer. "I'm always trying to decide when to go in tight and when to pull back," she says. The telling detail help us understand her subject, and these individual stories help us understand the broader place.

Nifong recently penned a story for The Roanoker, "What Makes Roanoke, Roanoke?" In this episode she talks about what she found out in the many conversations she had in writing it and she talks about the changes and trajectory of her own life as mother and professional.

Follow Christina Nifong's writing and projects in her Nourishing Stories newsletter available at christinanifong.com.

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Book No Further, an independent book store on Roanoke's Historic City Market.

Our exploration of Identity and Action wraps with podcast producer Brad Stephens. In this episode, Brad and Douglas Jackson look back at the entire season. Of course, we'll talk about books, many of this seasons' guests and what these conversations are adding up to, touching on the following and more:

• empathy and books,
• books and the unlikeable,
• writing and wisdom, and
• the complexity of the self

Brad has worked for years in finding ways to encourage positive action and support ambitious efforts to improve our community. He's also a good reader and in this episode, he shares some of the books from his shelf and even one he hasn't been able to make it through. He also tells of his journaling strategy, which might make an impression on you.

www.bookcityroanoke.com

Identity and Action: We continue exploring how the written word shapes our sense of self and how we put that into work in the world around us with a conversation with City of Roanoke Vice Mayor Joe Cobb. In this episode Joe discusses three books that weave through his way of being in the world. We touch on hospitality and fear, on seeing ourselves and on the power of claiming our bodies.

"Living this life...," Joe says "is not about what or who we ought to be according to someone else, but who we come to know ourselves to be. And for me, love is the guiding force in shaping that."

Joe Cobb is the co-author with Leigh Anne Taylor of Our Family Outing: A Memoir of Coming Out and Coming Through (self-published in 2011). This summer he marked one year of service on Roanoke's City Council. He has served in the past as pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, and currently he’s a chaplain for hermitage Roanoke and Outreach Coordinator for Highland Park Elementary School.

The three titles discussed in this episode:

• Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Doubleday, 1975) by Henri Nouwen
• Beloved (Knopf, 1987) by Toni Morrison
• Let Your Life Speak:Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Jossey Bass, 2000) by Parker J. Palmer