Silas House

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Silas House (1971- ) is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a widely respected music journalist, activist, and columnist. House's work has come to be known for its remarkable attention to the natural world, working class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people.
House burst onto the Southern literary scene with his first novel, Clay's Quilt (2001, [Algonquin Books] of Chapel Hill), which was a sleeper hit that appeared briefly on the New York Times list and became a word-of-mouth book throughout the South. He quickly followed with A Parchment of Leaves (2003, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), 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 equally succesful, becoming a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize as well as winning the Appalachian Book of the Year Award, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award, and others.
House's writing been widely published in such publications as The Oxford American, Newsday, Bayou, The Louisville Review, Night Train, Appalachian Heritage, and others. His work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and have been anthologized in such books as New Stories From the South: The Year's Best, 2004; Christmas in the South; Stories From the Blue Moon Cafe (vol. 1 and 2); The Alumni Grill; Shouts and Whispers; A Kentucky Christmas; Of Woods and Water; and many others. He has also written the introductions to Missing Mountains, a study of mountaintop removal; From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow, a biography of Earl Hamner, Jr., and Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses, a new edition by HarperCollins.
House is also a widely respected music journalist who serves as a contributing editor to No Depression magazine, where he has written features on Carlene Carter, Darrell Scott, Nickel Creek, Lucinda Williams, Kelly Willis, Delbert McClinton, Buddy Miller, and many others. In 2001 and 2002 he was a regular contributer to NPR's "All Things Considered."
In 2005 House wrote the play The Hurting Part, which was produced by the University of Kentucky.
House has completed a fourth novel, Eli the Good, which will be published in 2008. He is currently at work on his fifth novel. He serves as writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, where he also directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival.
House was born and still resides in rural Lily, Kentucky where he lives with his wife and two daughters.