Silas Dwane House was born on August 7,1971 and is an American writer best known for his novels.
30 Facts About Silas House
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Silas House is a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist.
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Silas House is known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners and is certainly among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.
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Silas House was born in Corbin, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby rural Lily, Laurel County, Kentucky, but he 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.
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Silas House has degrees from Eastern Kentucky University, and from Spalding University.
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In 2000, Silas House was chosen, along with since-published authors Pamela Duncan, Jeanne Braselton, and Jack Riggs, as one of the ten emerging talents in the south by the Millennial Gathering of Writers at Vanderbilt University.
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Silas House published his novel A Parchment of Leaves in 2003, which became a national bestseller and was nominated for several major awards.
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Silas House's next book, The Coal Tattoo, was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics' Circle Prize as well as won the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award, and others.
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Silas House's work has been championed by such acclaimed writers as Lee Smith, Brad Watson, and Larry Brown, all of whom were mentors for Silas House.
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Barbara Kingsolver has said in print that Silas House is one of her "favorite writers and favorite human beings" and environmental writer and activist Wendell Berry has expressed his appreciation of Silas House many times, including during an interview with the New York Times.
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Silas House published Something's Rising with creative nonfiction writer Jason Kyle Howard in March 2009.
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Silas House compiled a music playlist on the literature and music blog Largehearted Boy to accompany Southernmost.
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Silas House's seventh novel, Lark Ascending, was released in the fall of 2022 and was an immediate indie bestseller and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize.
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Silas House has said the book is his mediation on grief, the demise of democracy, and the climate crisis.
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Silas House's writing has appeared several times in The New York Times and The Atlantic.
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Silas House's work has been anthologized in such books as New Stories From the South: The Year's Best, 2004, and Best Food Writing: 2014.
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Silas House has written the introductions to Missing Mountains, a study of mountaintop removal; From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow, a biography of Earl Hamner, Jr.
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In 2005, Silas House wrote the play The Hurting Part, which was produced by the University of Kentucky.
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In 2010 Silas House became the NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he teaches Appalachian Literature and a writing workshop.
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Silas House has served on the fiction faculty at Spalding University's MFA in Creative Writing since 2005.
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Silas House is a music journalist and a contributing editor to No Depression magazine, for which he has written features on Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton, and many others.
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Between 2005 and 2010 Silas House was very 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 debris.
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Silas House says he got involved in the issue after being invited on a tour of devastated mountains by environmentalist, author, and public intellectual Wendell Berry.
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Silas House wrote the original draft of the 2005 Kentucky authors' statement against the practice; since the draft, more than three dozen authors have signed it.
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Silas House has been joined in this fight by other Kentucky writers, such as Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Maurice Manning.
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Silas House has two children and is married to writer and editor Jason Kyle Howard.
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In 2019, Silas House was awarded the Judy Gaines Young Book Award for excellence in Appalachian writing in the last five years.
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In 2021 Silas House was honored with the Artist Award from the Governors Award for the Arts, chosen by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, recognizing Silas House's contributions to the arts in his home state.
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In 2022, Silas House was given the largest monetary prize for an LGBTQ writer in the United States.
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Silas House was named Kentucky Poet Laureate by Governor Beshear in 2023.