Uplands: Selected Stories
As with his novels, many of Robert Morgan’s short stories let characters, often women, tell their own stories. Morgan’s earliest publications were short stories, and over six decades he has continued to produce short fiction, along with novels, poetry, essays, and biographies. He has said the short narrative is the most challenging genre, requiring the concision and precision of a poem with the drama and implied character insights of longer fiction. These stories reflect the distinctive features of his poetry, vivid, lyrical, evoking a particular place.
Morgan has found the culture and land of the southern Appalachians especially suited to expression in poetry and short fiction, the beauty of the ridges and valleys, the unique history, the laconic speech of the people, intense bonds of family and community, the storytelling gifts, and long memories. Gathered from five previous volumes of short fiction, Uplands proves greater in impact than the sum of its individual pieces.
Published by:
Jesse Stuart Foundation (Hardcover 2025)
Uplands: Selected Stories at Jesse Stuart Foundation
Praise for Robert Morgan:
At their finest, his stripped-down and almost primitive sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank Williams's best songs.
— The New York Times Book ReviewIn Morgan's hands... details become the stuff of stern, gripping drama.
— The New York TimesThe poet laureate of Appalachia.
— Kirkus Review
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