Lexington, KY - In the past five years, seasoned Kenwick resident Erik Reece has moved from being a fairly under-the-radar University of Kentucky English professor who enjoyed teaching about nature as much as he enjoyed being immersed in it, to becoming something of a household name among environmentalists and literati across the country.
In 2003, Reece and fellow UK English professor Randall Roorda led the university's first Summer Environmental Writing Program (SEWP), during which they took eight students to UK's 10,000 acre research property in eastern Kentucky, Robinson Forest, for five weeks of intensive study. Under these professors and various visiting writers, biologists and activists, the students participated in hands-on research and environmental writing in the midst of one of North America's most biologically diverse ecosystems. (Full disclosure: I had the honor of being amongst that initial group of eight students participating in SEWP.)
Many of those involved with SEWP, this writer included, went into the program expecting a break from the real world, a retreat to Walden Pond of sorts, a pastoral experience. In many aspects, it was all of these things, but in other ways it was a surprisingly stirring experience, even chilling at times, as it gave firsthand exposure to many quite "real world" tribulations that Appalachia faces every day. Perhaps another unexpected result was that the professors came out having learned as much as the students.
"Once I was down there," Reece recalled, as I caught up with him recently in the backyard of his Aurora Avenue home, "I think I realized that you can't write about what you love within the natural world without writing about the forces that are at work to destroy it. You just can't, in this day and age, with a good conscious."
For Reece, the most powerful experience of the trip was seeing the up close, in-the-flesh effects of strip mining in Appalachia. The experience impacted him so much that he returned to the area again and again to get a closer look. In what started as an essay for Harper's Magazine, Reece documented a year in the life (and essentially, the death) of one specific mountain, Lost Mountain, which was razed for coal. The essay turned into a book, "Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness," described by Wendell Berry in the foreword as being "by far the best account of mountaintop removal and of its effects." The book was met with widespread critical acclaim, earning the Sierra Club's David R. Brower Award for Environmental Journalism as well as the Columbia University School of Journalism's 2005 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.
Reece's more recently-published "American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God" has also been well-received by critics, receiving a considerable boost recently when Terry Gross of NPR's "Fresh Air" conducted an on-air interview with Reece May 13. "American Gospel" is Reece's exploration into his personal and conflicted relationship and struggles with religion, having grown up as the son and grandson of Southern Baptist preachers in West Virginia. In the new book, which he has referred to as being in many ways a sequel to "Lost Mountain," Reece summons the works of great writers, from Thomas Jefferson to Walt Whitman - writers who, though not commonly insinuated as religious writers, have somehow encapsulated the spiritual ideals he holds close.
Along with Bobbie Ann Mason, Reece serves as a writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky, a position that allows him some time off from his teaching schedule in order to work on his writing (though he is still teaching a graduate seminar in the fall, in addition to Creative Nonfiction and Literature as Place classes). Currently, he is finishing up a collection of essays, the form and tradition that he said he feels he comes from, as well as blogging regularly for True/Slant, an online news network of "entrepreneurial journalists." Reece doesn't only dabble in the nonfiction realm, however; he has also edited a number of poetry collections and has a forthcoming collection of his own poetry, to be published through Larkspur Press, entitled "Short History of the Present."
In some ways, things for Erik Reece have changed over the past half-decade. He has an editor and an agent to answer to, as well as a stream of letters, e-mails and online comments from hundreds of fans and contenders alike, eager to inform him about the ways his work has affected them. He is glad to report that he really believes the perception of mountaintop removal is changing.
"It's not as much on the radar as you would want it to be, but just in the last three years it has increased," he said, adding that more and more people outside of Appalachia are staring to be more aware of the issues surrounding mountaintop removal. "I get e-mails from kids in San Francisco who are reading the book and writing book reports."
In many ways, however, life is as it ever was for Reece. He still cherishes his time in the woods, in his canoe, at the lake. He spends much of his free time in his backyard vegetable garden, is conflicted about the time he spends in front of a computer screen and still loves getting out to see live music when he can.
"I'm a social animal in many ways, but I'm also a solitary animal," Reece said, "so I always feel that pull. But I like being able to walk everywhere and ride my bike. I really love this neighborhood."
For links to the transcript and recording of the Terry Gross interview with Erik Reece, as well as Reece's blog and homepage, please visit this story online at www.chevychaser.com.