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Cover of Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia

Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia

Laura Jackson

Deep & Wild is the debut essay collection of Laura Jackson. Jackson, a lifelong West Virginian, employs her knowledge of and curiosity for the region to describe life in West Virginia while dismantling stereotypes portrayed in popular media with humor and tenderness. Jackson works to describe what is special about her home, looking head-on at all the ways life in West Virginia may be wonderful and terrible, beautiful and ugly.

Through her essays, Jackson invites readers to peer under creek rocks for crawfish, look a little more fondly at opossums, road trip to an annual ramp festival, and learn why not to trust a GPS along West Virginia's rugged roads. From her living room to Appalachian hollows, Jackson approaches the sublime, seeking truths in the removal of a stump from her backyard and in John Denver's famous song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

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Publication Date:
2023
WCoNA Status:
2025 Winner
Genre:
  • Nonfiction Essays

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About the Authors
Laura Jackson

Laura Jackson, a lifelong West Virginian and environmental humorist, channels her passion for the Mountain State's wild wonders into captivating prose. With a degree in Environmental Studies from Eckerd College and an MFA from Chatham University, she crafts essays that blend humor, insight, and reverence for opossums, mossy forests, and untamed rivers. As a writer for WVU Research Communications and contributor to outlets like Terrain.org and Wonderful West Virginia, her debut collection, Deep & Wild — winner of the 2023 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize and named Book of the Year by the Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia — celebrates Appalachia's joy and contradictions beyond stereotypes. When not rescuing stray animals or paddling West Virginia's waters, she's plotting her next ode to the feral heart of home. Find her at laura-jackson.com or @thatwvwriter on Instagram.