SILAS HOUSE

Silas House was born in He was born and grew up in rural Lily, a town in Laurel County, Kentucky. He also spent much of his childhood in nearby Leslie County, Kentucky, which he has cited as the basis for the fictional Crow County, which serves as the setting for his first three novels.

He has degrees from Eastern Kentucky University (BA in English with emphasis on American literature), and from Spalding University (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing).

In addition to being a novelist, he is also a music journalist and columnist. House's fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people.

House's first novel Clay's Quilt was published in It was a finalist for both the Southeast Booksellers' Association fiction award and the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award.

He followed with A Parchment of Leaves (2003), which became a national bestseller and was nominated for several major awards. The book was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics' Circle Prize and won the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Chaffin Award for Literature, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award and many others.

House's next book The Coal Tattoo (2004) was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics' Circle Prize as well as winning the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award, and others.

House's fourth novel, Eli the Good, was published in 2009 to great acclaim. The book emerged as a number one bestseller on the Southern lists and received the first annual Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library system, an award given to a book for use in the ESL and literacy programs of New York City.

In addition to his novels, House’s writing includes essays, short stories, and a nonfiction book on the topic of mountaintop removal. House is also a playwright. In 2005, House wrote the play The Hurting Part, which was produced by the University of Kentucky. In 2009 his second play, Long Time Travelling, was produced by the Actor's Guild of Lexington (Kentucky). In 2012, Berea College Laboratory Theatre presented his controversial play This Is My Heart For You, about a small town divided by a gay rights discrimination case and hate crime.

In 2010 House became the NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he teaches Appalachian Literature and a writing workshop.

Since 2005 House has been increasingly visible in the fight against mountaintop removal mining, an environmentally devastating form of coal mining that blasts the entire top off a mountain and fills the valley below with the debris. House has published many articles about mountaintop removal.

House serves on the board of Appalachian Voices, the major clearing house for grassroots organizations fighting mountaintop removal, was a speaker in 2011 at Appalachia Rising, a major protest in Washington D.C. that resulted in more than 115 arrests, and in 2013 was the keynote speaker at I Love Mountains Day.

House has two daughters. He presently lives in Berea, Kentucky. House's next novel is Little Fire, which he hopes to finish this fall.