1. Silas Dwane House was born on August 7,1971 and is an American writer best known for his novels.
36 Facts About Silas House
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Silas House is a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist.
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Silas 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.
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Silas House was born in Corbin, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby rural Lily, in the tri-county area of Knox County, Laurel County, and Whitley County, Kentucky.
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Silas House spent much of his childhood in nearby Leslie County, Kentucky, which he has cited as the basis for the fictional Crow County, 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 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, and 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's seventh novel, Lark Ascending, was released in the fall of 2022 and was an immediate indie bestseller, a USA Today bestseller, and winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize in the category of fiction.
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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 appeared in Time, The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, and other publications.
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Silas House's work has been anthologized in New Stories From the South: The Year's Best, 2004 and Best Food Writing: 2014.
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Silas House wrote 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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Since 2021, Silas House has served as editor of the imprint Fireside Industries at the University Press 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 served as a contributing editor to No Depression magazine.
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Silas House has written features on artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Lucinda Williams, Nickel Creek, Jason Isbell, and many others.
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Silas House wrote the story for the controversial music video of "In Your Love" by Tyler Childers, depicting the tragic love story of two gay coal miners.
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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 became 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, which more than three dozen authors signed.
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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 was born and raised in Southeastern Kentucky, and presently lives in Lexington.
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Silas House has two children, and is married to writer and editor Jason Kyle Howard.
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In 2017, Silas House was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
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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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In 2023 Silas House was one of five judges to select the National Book Award in the category of Fiction.
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Silas House was named Kentucky Poet Laureate by Governor Beshear in 2023.
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On December 12,2023, Silas House read his poem "Those Who Carry Us" at the second inauguration of Governor Beshear.