Goshen Road with Author Bonnie Proudfoot

January 28, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Originally scheduled for this date and time, "The Mines Wars" with Steve Watkins, has been canceled. We will work on rescheduling. The replacement program features novelist and poet Bonnie Proudfoot, who has local connections.

"Goshen Road" is an elegiac, unvarnished, and empathetic portrait of one working-class family over two decades in rural West Virginia, with sisters Dessie and Billie Price as its urgently beating heart. Bonnie Proudfoot captures them, their husbands, and their children as they balance on the divide between Appalachia old and new, struggling for survival and reconciling themselves with past hurts and future uncertainties as the economy and culture shift around them.

Author Bonnie Proudfoot will discuss the process of writing the book; the challenges of shaping the novel with a focus on creating realistic and engaging characters whose lives are connected to each other and to the region; and the process of bringing the book into the world and its reception. She will also read a few sections of the novel.

Bonnie Proudfoot was born in NY City, but in 1979 moved to Wetzel County, WV. Her fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays can be found in journals and anthologies. She has been nominated twice for Pushcart Prize as well as a Best of the Net. Her novel, Goshen Road (OU/ Swallow Press) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway. Her 2022 poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions. A book of poems, Incomer, is forthcoming in 2025 on Shadelandhouse Modern Press. Bonnie currently resides in Athens, Ohio. Learn more about Bonnie at https://bonnieproudfootblog.wordpress.com

Lunch With Books Livestream starts at noon on Facebook and YouTube.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!