Wiley Cash, Ph.D.

Writer-in-Residence

Contact Information

  • wcash@unca.edu
  • 251-6583
  • 239 Karpen Hall

Office Hours

  • Tuesday 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
  • Note: And by appointment

Wiley Cash is on leave for Fall 2023

Wiley Cash is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels The Last Ballad, A Land More Kind Than Home, and This Dark Road to Mercy. The founder of the Open Canon Book Club and the co-founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists' Residency, he serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina Asheville and teaches in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA. He has received or been a finalist for numerous awards, including the Southern Book Prize, the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Weatherford Award, and the American Booksellers' Association Debut Novel of the Year, and his novels have been listed as best-of-the-year by The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, the American Library Association, and other publications and organizations. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two young daughters.

Education

  • B.A., University of North Carolina Asheville
  • M.A., University of North Carolina-Greensboro
  • Ph.D., University of Louisiana-Lafayette

Courses Taught

  • LANG 499: Special Topics in Fiction Writing
  • LANG 363: Fiction Writing Workshop
  • LANG 260: Introduction to Creative Writing
  • LIT 329: Southern Literature
  • LIT 240: Introduction to Literature

Publications

Novels

  • The Last Ballad. New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, Summer 2017.
  • This Dark Road to Mercy. New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, Jan. 2014.
  • A Land More Kind Than Home. New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2012.

Short Fiction

  • “Verchel Park.” Idaho Review. (Dec. 2015).
  • “July, After Church.” StorySouth (Sept. 2015). Online. (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.)
  • “When You Say ‘Home.’” Appalachian Heritage (2015). (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.)
  • “The Body.” Salt Magazine (Aug. 2014): 49.
  • “The One Night of the Year.” How To Be A Man: An Online Anthology. Ed. Colum McCann. Byliner. 2013.
  • “Bottle Rocket.” Carolina Quarterly 60.1 (Winter 2010): 35-36.
  • “Swannanoa.” Anthology of Appalachian Writers, vol. 1. Ed. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt. Huntington, WV: Shepherd University Press, 2009. 47-51.
  • “The Cove Fire.” Roanoke Review 33 (Spring 2008): 15-18.
  • “Gunter Mountain.” Crab Orchard Review 13.1 (Winter/Spring 2008): 59-68.
  • “Kitty.” Parting Gifts 20.2 (Winter 2007-2008): 63-64.
  • “Leonard and the Mermaid.” Wisconsin Review 41.2 (Spring 2007): 33-42.
  • “Grenadine.” The Louisiana Review 5 (Spring 2007): 17-21.

Book

“This Louisiana Thing That Drives Me”: The Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines. Marcia Gaudet, Reggie Young, and Wiley Cash. Introduction by Ernest J. Gaines. Epigram by Wendell Berry. Lafayette, LA: U of Louisiana P. 2009.

Essays

  • “The Family Home as Microcosm of the Southern Experience in Thomas Wolfe’s Plays.” South Atlantic Review 76.1 (Winter 2012): 99-112.
  • “‘Those folks downstairs believe in ghosts’: The Eradication of Folklore in the Literature of Charles W. Chesnutt.” Charles Chesnutt Reappraised: Essays on the First Major African American Fiction Writer. Ed. David Izzo and Maria Orban. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2009. 69-80.
  • “Langston Hughes and the Dream of America.” Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Ann B. Dobie. Boston: Thomson/Heinle, 2008. 233-238.
  • “What Do Thomas Wolfe and Charles W. Chesnutt Have to Tell Us About North Carolina?” The Thomas Wolfe Review 32.1-2 (2008): 22-33.
  • “Space, Time, and Region: Quantum Mechanics and the Oral Tradition in Fred Chappell’s I Am One of You Forever.” The South Carolina Review 40.1 (Fall 2007): 53-61.
  • “‘What Men Dream About Doing’: A Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines.” The Mississippi Quarterly 60.2 (Spring 2007): 289-304.
  • “‘The dark was hived with flesh and mystery’: Thomas Wolfe, the American Adam and the Polemical Persona of Race.” The Thomas Wolfe Review 30.1-2 (2006): 44-55.
  • “The Colonel’s Dream Deferred: A Reconsideration of Chesnutt’s Liberal Racist.” American Literary Realism 37.1 (Fall 2004): 24-36.

Reviews

  • The Four Lost Men, The Magical Campus: University of North Carolina Writings, 1917-1920, The Death of Gant by Thomas Wolfe, and The Wax Cylinders: Julia Wolfe Interviews by John Skally Terry. North Carolina Literary Review 18 (2009): 249-254.
  • Thomas Wolfe: An Illustrated Biography and Windows of the Heart: The Correspondence of Thomas Wolfe and Margaret Roberts by Ted Mitchell and Thomas Wolfe: When Do the Atrocities Begin? by Joanne Marshall Mauldin. North Carolina Literary Review 17 (2008): 193-198.
  • “The Thomas Wolfe Society.” Appalachian Heritage 35.1 (Fall 2007): 67-68.
  • Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels by Ryan Simmons. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 40.1 (Spring 2007): 146-148.
  • Bridging Southern Cultures: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Edited by John Lowe. Interdisciplinary Humanities 23.1 (Spring 2006): 113-117.

Website

wileycash.com