Nestled in the mountains, in an out-of-the-way part of rural America, the fictional town of Mosely is home to ordinary people: proud, compassionate, and complex. Women serving biscuits at the gas station counter, nieces listening to Loretta Lynn with their uncles, teenage boys flirting with one another at prom, and parents busy raising their children’s babies. This small community is woven together by family ties, church congregations, coal mines, and fast-food chains. Amidst these hills, the residents work hard to find belonging, love, and identity.

Tore All to Pieces is a fragmented novel that delves into the lives of Appalachian characters whose struggles, backgrounds, and experiences intersect, and examines how interconnected yet lonely people can be. The different narratives, presented in the form of poems and stories, bend and weave like the roads of Appalachia. Each character’s voice is richly portrayed through gripping and lyrical language, uniting in a quest for truth, genuine understanding, acknowledgement, and respect.

In a time when the rights of queer individuals, women, and people of color are increasingly under threat, this work powerfully re-affirms the humanity and significance of marginalized people. Tore All to Pieces underscores their enduring presence and rightful belonging.

Rural Education and Queer Identities: Rural and (Out)Rooted explores the facets and intersections of rural education and Queer identities. It looks to schooling and education policy to question how Queer rural youth and educators can be seen, be safe, and be valued in schools and their communities. Taking the claim that rural people are deeply rooted to rural places, this text considers what a sense of rootedness looks like for Queer people in rural communities.

Through a diverse collection of scholarly contributions, personal narratives, and creative works, this text goes on to explore the notion of outrootedness and belonging in educational spaces. It presents a more complete, more inclusive picture of rural America and lifts up the voices of Queer rural people to be sung and heard. Topics explored include: Queer and trans advocacy in rural educational spaces; supporting Queer students and educators; intersectional identities; wellbeing and education; sex education in rural schools; and school safety for LGBQT+ students.

This unique collection examines intersections between Queer identities and rural education. It will be important reading for scholars and those studying for courses on Foundations of Education, Social Justice Education, History of U.S. Education, Education Policy and Politics, Queer Studies, Women and Gender Studies, as well as pre-service and place-based education courses.

From Florida, whose “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits K-12 instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation, to Texas, which is shuttering libraries in schools, America is in the middle of a far-right war on public education.

Now, for the first time, K-12 educators from across the nation give readers a teacher’s-eye view of the radical right crusade to take down public education, coordinated by well-funded, well-connected far-right political interests. Christian nationalists hell-bent on erasing the line between church and state, white supremacists opposed to a curriculum that teaches the enduring effects of anti-Black racism, political action committees, such as Moms for Liberty, calling for the banning of novels featuring LGBTQ+ people, and profiteers eager to divert taxpayer dollars into private schools are mounting a relentless attack on teachers, the students they serve, and the commitment to public education that is a cornerstone of democracy. “It’s a phenomenal, unprecedented moment that we’re in,” says a librarian, recently retired from her Texas school. “It’s surprising how many people don’t know what’s going on. I talk to reporters who have no idea. And they’re reporters.”

In Trouble in Censorville, public school teachers from states as far-flung as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington describe, in their own words, being threatened, stalked, doxxed, ostracized, smeared as “pedophiles” and “Marxists,” placed on leave, and fired for teaching historical truth and racial justice, supporting LGBTQ+ students and, in one case, for wearing “insufficiently” feminine attire. Their stories bring readers face-to-face with the human cost of these attacks, which range from social isolation to pent-up anger over institutional betrayal to the terrible toll on teachers’ mental and physical health.

And yet, teachers are fighting back. They’re mobilizing colleagues, parents, and community members who share their faith in the freedom to read, the freedom to think critically, the freedom to challenge small-minded provincialism. Their stories of frontline resistance, collected here, provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.

Their gripping testimonials are enhanced by a timeline that situates today’s far-right war on public education in the context of American history, moving briskly from Reconstruction to the anti-left and anti-gay fearmongering of the McCarthy era to the Black Lives Matter movement to the Trump presidency.

Terrifying, infuriating, and inspiring, Trouble in Censorville sounds the alarm for a democracy on fire.

No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly―another casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver’s career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at work: “No one will protect you, including me.” A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver’s testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done.

In Gay Poems for Red States, Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver’s earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future―for a home―in an often unwelcoming place.