Place, People, and Presence: CU Professors Create Collection of Essays on Rural PA

In Rivers, Ridges, and Valleys: Essays on Rural Pennsylvania, the state is not just a place on a map but a mosaic of memory, myth, and meaning, pieced together one essay at a time. 

CU-Bloomsburg English professors Jerry Wemple and Anne Dyer Stuart have edited a collection of twenty-seven essays on the idea of place and represent rural areas in the north, south, east, and west of Pennsylvania.

Published in March, Rivers, Ridges, and Valleys focuses on a multitude of topics, ranging from several essays dealing with environmental issues such as the aftermath of coal mining and, more recently, hydraulic fracturing, or understanding family legacy and loss. Other essays celebrate the outdoors or focus on the history of people and places.

“Pennsylvania is not a one-dimensional place,” says Wemple. “When you look at American literature through well-known authors like William Faulkner in Mississippi or Harry Crews in the South, it’s their lens on the place. It's like traveling through space and time, a reader can travel to a different place and get a strong sense of what a place is.” 

Translating the emotional or cultural weight of a place into words is not a simple task, one Stuart hopes people learn about through the essay collection. “Life is complicated no matter who you are or from where you come or where you live. We all grapple with the same complicated emotions, even though our experiences are wildly different.” 

“There’s a mantra said a lot in the teaching of writing, which always rings true: the universal is found in the particular,” adds Stuart. “When we read stories particular to a region, we’re really reading about the experience of being human.”

The collection has its origins in a panel Wemple organized at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference related to rural Pennsylvania. The variety of presenters and their enthusiasm for the topic led to Wemple beginning work on the essay collection.

“I wanted to have a panel of people who write about rural PA as part of northern Appalachia,” says Wemple. “Every town is different, even if they are not far apart. The culture, the way they speak, and even the way they live day to day are very different. Most people outside of Pennsylvania don’t realize that.” 

The featured writers vary in age and represent many generations. Many are native Pennsylvanians, with others who came to the state from places like Ohio, North Carolina, Utah, California, and the Philippines. Included in the collection are Professor Jimmy Guignard from CU-Mansfield and Professor Emerita Marjorie Maddox, who retired last year from CU-Lock Haven

“Places are as alive as people,” commented Guignard. “Over the years, I’ve learned from cultural geographers that places are spaces invested with meaning. Something becomes a place by living in it and having good and bad experiences in it. Part of it is looking at how the place influences people. How geography shapes people. The fishers, the hunters, and farmers carry the physical reminders of how the earth shaped them.”

A North Carolina native, Guignard’s writing process helped him feel more integrated into Pennsylvania culture. “The four or five years of work on my essay that went into the collection went into changing my own perception,” he says. “I always felt like an outsider. The process of writing my essay let me become more a part of the place.” 

“Place is always more than mere location,” Maddox says, an Ohio native who was co-editor with Wemple of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. “Whether it is woods or small town, place translates to belonging or not belonging, to vivid scenes wrapped tightly in memories, to what stretches us to grow and learn. Place is what inspires us. It’s who we are and who we hope to be. Sometimes, it’s what we need to leave behind.” 

“One of the things about writing about place is how many people see rural space as a blank space on a map,” adds Guignard. “There are people everywhere in these places who are tied to the land, who love it. “There’s nothing there,” some might say, but that’s not true. This book shows that.”

For both Wemple and Stuart, sharing experiences through text is crucial for everyday life. 

“Storytelling is at the core of our human experience,” says Stuart. “It's how we make sense of the world. Any time we can learn about other viewpoints it only deepens our understanding of this difficult, beautiful 'place,' no matter its location.”

“I can tell you the facts, that Sunbury is a post-industrial town on the Susquehanna River, but I could also tell you a story of my brother and I growing up in the area,” says Wemple. “Facts are the skeleton, stories make a place alive and give it flesh.”

The book is available from the publisher here. It is also on Amazon and other online book sellers.