This week we branch out away from Louisville and venture out into the state to the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky, where our guest this week resides. Bobi Conn is a technical writer by day and author whose first book, In The Shadow of the Valley, was published this past May by Little A Publishing, the literary imprint for Amazon. Her memoir of growing up in a holler on the outskirts of Morehead KY conveys a tension between the beauty of the landscape in contrast to her family’s poverty, her father’s drug addiction and his abuse of Bobi, her brother, and their mother. The memoir is Bobi’s attempt to have some control over her own life’s story. In fact, she never strived to be a memoirist. Her true literary love lies more with poetry and short stories. But, something powerful inside her needed to be released and her journey to write it as her creative writing thesis in graduate school to 12 years later publishing it and also narrating the audiobook version of that story is what we will talk about today.

Bobi discusses why she thinks magical realism is a great way to tell stories set in Appalachia, why the term “holler” has such significance among the people who live in this region, why her Granny’s house is a metaphor for her life’s journey, and what stories she finds in the classic country music she listened to on the radio as a kid.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

In The Shadow of the Valley by Bobi Conn

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance

Hill Women by Cassie Chambers

The Odyssey by Homer

You can find us on FB, instagram (@perksofbeingabookloverpod) and on our blog site at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com

Perks airs on Forward Radio 106.5 FM and forwardradio.org every Wednesday at 6 pm, Thursdays at 6 am and 12 pm. We have purchased the rights to the theme music used.