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King College > Appalachian Extension
Appalachian Extension Staff
 The Extension syllabus this year will include Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven, a powerful novel set in the coal-mining regions of Appalachia. We are pleased to announce that participants will have the opportunity to share time with Giardina as part of their course of study. Giardina, who grew up in a mining family in McDowell County, West Virginia, received a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a Master of Divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va. She returned to West Virginia to live and write, and ran for governor of the state in 2000.
Dr. Craig McDonald, coordinator of the Appalachian Extension, has lived in the region for more than 28 years, and has taught composition and literature at King College for 23 years. The director of the Snider Honors Program at King, McDonald brings a background in British literature to the Extension as well as interest in the work of Wendell Berry. Much of his thinking about education takes shape in his recently published first novel, Among His Personal Effects, the story of a medieval schoolmaster and four of his students. McDonald likes Martin Buber’s notion that education is fundamentally “encounter.” McDonald received his doctorate from the University of York, England.
 Dr. Richard Moyer has developed the environmental focus for the Appalachian Extension. Moyer’s family heritage includes the cultivation of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. During 15 years teaching biology at King College, he transformed his yard into a suburban edible landscape to feed his family of eight and to demonstrate wise land use. Desirous of broadening this vision, the Moyers recently moved to an area of southwest Virginia with a rich history of grass-fed beef production. As a conservation easement farm, their new home weds local food production, habitat preservation, and watershed protection. Devon cattle and Bourbon Red turkeys are two of the heritage breeds they are working to preserve, as well as heirloom fruits and vegetables. Moyer received his doctorate from Oregon State University.
 Brandon Story has fashioned the music component of the Appalachian Extension. He has served as an instructor of English, teaching writing and literature at King since 2000. Story also played bass with The Reeltime Travelers, a nationally recognized old-time band, which performed at most major bluegrass festivals in the country. The band appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, and was featured on the soundtrack of the film “Cold Mountain.” Story and his wife Mariel are now founders of the band The Catbird Seat; he continues to perform with songwriter Ed Snodderly and fiddler Heidi Clare, and to make appearances at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va. His thesis, a musical biography of eastern Kentucky Holiness preacher and singer Ernest Phipps, was published in The Bristol Sessions: Writings about the Big Bang of Country Music. Story received his Master of Arts from East Tennessee State University.
 Dr. Dale Brown has constructed the literary segment of the Extension’s offerings. After 20 years teaching literature and writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Brown has recently moved to King College to serve as the first director of the Buechner Institute (buechnerinstitute.org). The Appalachian Extension is one part of the Institute’s mission to generate useful conversation on faith and culture. For more than 10 years, Brown was the director of the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin, and he brings his interests in southern literature and religion and literature to the Extension staff. Brown has published extensive interviews with more than 30 American writers. Many of these were included in his book Of Faith & Fiction. A second collection, Conversations with American Writers, is forthcoming from Eerdmans Publishing. He has also written a critical biography of Frederick Buechner, The Book of Buechner: A Journey Through His Writings. Brown received his doctorate from the University of Missouri.
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