Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Eliza Griswold to Deliver Appalachian Forum Series Lecture

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program will welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold to UK next week as part of the Appalachian Forum series.

The lecture, “Beyond Extraction: Stories, like resources can be extracted from communities — how do we break the paradigm?” will take place 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5, on Zoom. Those interested may also watch the talk live from the Appalachian Center at 624 Maxwelton Court.

Griswold is the author of the award-winning book “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America.” The book follows a mother and her children for seven years as they wage a battle against the oil and gas industry. The family has lived in their corner of western Pennsylvania, across the border from West Virginia, for over 150 years. Nonetheless, they lose their animals, their land and their own health as hydraulic fracturing flourishes.

“It’s the attention to the smallest, but most intimate of details that sets Griswold’s work apart,” said Loka Ashwood, an assistant professor in the UK Department of Sociology. “The book begins with a 4-H fair and gradually works from these joys of rural life into its sorrows as a site of extraction. The pace of the text is bewitching and its lessons unforgettable.”

The book spans multiple disciplines and topics of interest to the public, including public health, land rights, regulatory law, community development, policy, politics, environmental science and corporate power.

The virtual talk is open to the UK community and the public. Register at https://uky.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GzvgWrJ4R0-EIfKAtlrInw.

The event is cosponsored by the Appalachian Center, the Department of Sociology and the UK Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences. 

More information is available at https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/eliza-griswold.