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Robert Gipe

When: Thursday, March 11th 2021 6pm EST

Where: Virtual Event (Register Below)

Kingsport native Robert Gipe, a nationally recognizedauthor and community arts organizer, will share with us the third novel in his successful Canard County trilogy, Pop: An Illustrated Novel on March 11th. Pop follows three generations of a family as they reckon with the changing landscape of Appalachia during the Trump era. We have come to love his whimsical drawings and raw, quirky characters as they struggle to find their way in the world. His first novel in the series, Trampoline, was awarded the 2016 Weatherford Award in Fiction. Robert is currently a script consultant for a forthcoming television series based on Beth Macy's book Dopesick that highlights the opiod crisis. Register today for a possible discount code from the publisher Ohio Press as the event date approaches!

Pop: An Illustrated Novel

A coming-of-age story of hope, betrayal, and familial legacy set in rural Appalachia.

Set in the run-up and aftermath of the 2016 election, Pop brings the Canard County trilogy to a close as Dawn, the young narrator of Gipe’s first novel, Trampoline, is now the mother of the seventeen-year-old Nicolette. Whereas Dawn has become increasingly agoraphobic as the internet persuades her the world is descending into chaos, Nicolette narrates an Appalachia where young people start businesses rooted in local food culture and work to build community. But Nicolette’s precocious rise in the regional culinary scene is interrupted when her policeman cousin violently assaults her, setting in motion a chain of events that threaten to destroy the family—and Canard County in the process.

In the tradition of Gipe’s first two novels, Pop’s Appalachia is full of clear-eyed, caring, creative, and complicated people struggling to hang on to what is best about their world and reject what is not. Their adventures reflect an Appalachia that is overrun by outside commentators looking for stories to tell about the region—sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but almost always oversimplified.

 

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