Jeff Biggers

Jeff Biggers (born in 1963) is an American writer, editor, journalist, and critic. He is the author of two books: The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America and In the Sierra Madre. He has worked as a writer, educator and community organizer across the United States, Europe, India and Mexico. His award-winning stories have appeared on NPR, PRI, and in scores of travel, literary and music magazines, and national and foreign newspapers, and various anthologies. He has been a commentator on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and for Pacific News Service national syndication. His work has received numerous honors, including an American Book Award, Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, a Field Foundation Fellowship and an Illinois Arts Council Creative Non-Fiction Award. He serves as a contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review, and is a member of the PEN American Center. In the 1990s, as part of his work to develop literacy and literary programs in rural, reservation and neglected communities in the American Southwest, he founded the Northern Arizona Book Festival. In the 1980s, Biggers served as an assistant to former Senator George McGovern in Washington, DC, and as a personal aide to Rev. William Sloane Coffin at the Riverside Church in New York City. Born in Ohio, raised in Illinois and Arizona, he earned a B.A. in History and English at Hunter College in New York City. He also studied at the University of California in Berkeley, Columbia University and the University of Arizona.

Bibliography

Biggers, Jeff (2007), In the Sierra Madre. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252031016 ISBN-13: 978-0252074998

Biggers, Jeff, (2007), The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard. ISBN ISBN-10: 1593761511 ISBN-13: 978-1593761516

Biggers, Jeff (2006), In the Sierra Madre. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252031016

Biggers, Jeff, (2006), The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard. ISBN-10: 1593760310 ISBN-13: 978-1593760311

Biggers, Jeff, Brosi, George and West, Don (2004), No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems by Don West. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252071573

Writings

The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment argues that beyond its mythology in the American imagination, Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States-—a cradle of U.S. freedom and independence, and a hot bed for literature and music. Some of the most quintessential and daring American innovations, rebellions, and social movements have emerged from an area often stereotyped as a quaint backwater. In the process, immigrants from the Appalachian diaspora have become some of our nation's most famous leaders. The Citizen-Times reviewed it as a "masterpiece of popular history...revelations abound." According to a review in the San Antonio Express-News, the book is "full of historical insights...debunking stereotypes is one of the driving motivations behind Biggers' writing."

In an interview on National Public Radio, Biggers laid out chapters of the progressive history of Appalachia. Specifically, he noted:

∑ Appalachians formed the first District of Washington as a defiant outpost outside of British control

∑ Southern mountain insurgents orchestrated their own attacks on British-led troops, turning the tide of the American Revolution in the South

∑ From an Appalachian hamlet in North Carolina came Nina Simone, who went on to become an international diva with her blend of folk, jazz, and Bach-motif riffs

∑ Adolph Ochs, a young publisher from Chattanooga, took over the New York Times and set its course for world acclaim

∑ Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers in Detroit, one of the 20th century's most important labor leaders, drew from a long-time activist family in West Virginia

∑The first antislavery newspaper in America was founded in Tennessee, and Appalachians trained New England's legendary abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison

∑ Pearl S. Buck, the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, was recognized for her memoirs of West Virginia as much as for her literary contributions to the Far East

∑ Appalachia produced America's first woman muckraker Anne Royall, pioneering social realism author Rebecca Harding Davis, and literary innovators Martin Delany, Willa Cather, Thomas Wolfe, James Still, Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, among many others

∑ Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer, invented the first syllabary in modern times

∑ Blues icons, Bessie Smith and WC Handy, emerged from Appalachia's rich African American musical traditions

∑ Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee galvanized the shock troops of the Civil Rights Movement

In the Sierra Madre is a memoir and narrative nonfiction history that chronicles the life and times in one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the native Raramuri/Tarahumara, Biggers examines the ways of a resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of the Mexican mountaineers, and the parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, hidden Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters like Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo and Pancho Villa, Biggers searches for the legendary treasures of the Sierra Madre (Mexico's Copper Canyon). In the Sierra Madre won the Gold Medal in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards (Travel Essays) in 2006. The memoir was praised by Booklist as "an astonishing sojourn." The San Antonio Express-News reviewed that it was "full of historical insights, and unforgettable characters."

References

[http://www.mountainx.com/features/2006/0222appalachia.php Mountain Xpress]

[http://www.redroom.com/publishedreviews/biggers-provides-observations-appalachia-sierra-madre-0 San Antonio Express-News]

[http://www.redroom.com/publishedreviews/sierra-madre Booklist]

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5386355 National Public Radio]

[http://www.redroom.com/publishedwork/the-united-states-appalachia#reviews Redroom]

External links

Official Website [http://www.jeffbiggers.com

From These Mountains, Mountain Express, http://www.mountainx.com/features/2006/0222appalachia.php

Celebrating the History of Appalachia on NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5386355

Where Myth is Life, Free New Mexican newspaper, Santa Fe, http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/51243.html

Yellowstone Public Radio with Leni Hollman, http://ypr-pc.streamguys.net/podcast/atlarge/al061115biggers.mp3

In the Sierra Madre interview on NPR's Latino USA, http://www.latinousa.org/program/lusapgm718.html

In the Sierra Madre interview on NPR's Here on Earth, http://wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_070226k.cfm