New Erik Reece article in True/Slant

Check out Erik Reece's great article on coal dumping in Appalachia in True/Slant...

If you're not familiar with Reece, he's a major-award-winning UK English professor who has taken up a ginormous passion with the coal mining practices in Appalachia over the past decade or so. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to study with Erik in Robinson Forest in 2003, at the first month-long, intensive Summer Environmental Writing Program (SEWP). The program changed my life in a lot of ways, and Erik, seeing up close and firsthand the effects of mountaintop removal, was moved enough to write about it... like, a lot... (an article for Harper's grew into the book Lost Mountain: A Year in Vanishing Wilderness, which in my opinion really helped give momentum to the growing national media and grassroots attention on the issue).

Erik Reece's newest book, American Gospel: On Family, History and the Kingdom of God, is about his conflicted views on religion. If you're not familiar with him, I reccommend getting acquainted with his work – he's a Lexington gem who is much bigger than this town....