The Little Kanawha reading series will welcome Marie Manilla

GLENVILLE, W.Va (WDTV) — As part of the ongoing Little Kanawha reading series, Glenville State University will host Marie Manilla next month.

The event will take place on Thursday, September 8 at 4 p.m. at the Robert F. Kidd Library.

It is free and open to the public.

A native of West Virginia, Manila was Shepherd University’s 2021 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence.

She often grapples with issues of race, class, and gender in her work, and also strives to present a fuller portrait of who West Virginians are, not just to outsiders, but to insiders as well.

The 2014 Manila Novel, The Patron Saint of the Ugly, takes place in a fictionalized version of the Huntington neighborhood where she grew up. The book received the Weatherford Prize and was the 2021 One Book, One West Virginia Common Read.

The Little Kanawha Reading Series is a collaboration between the Glenville State Department of Language and Literature, the Appalachian Studies Program, and the Robert F. Kidd Library.

Its purpose is to provide a showcase for a diversity of literary forms and voices to recognize and enrich the cultural heritage of Appalachia and the communities around the Little Kanawha River.

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