A regional author is winning national acclaim for her debut memoir, about her experiences growing up in a Pentecostal church in Southwest Virginia and attending Harvard University.
Back in May, Emilee Hackney was still new to interviewing.
"My name is Emilee Hackney," she said during an interview with Radio IQ. "I was born and raised in Tazewell County, Virginia. My family is from Buchanan County. Ummmmm..."
She laughed.
"I'm really bad at this kind of thing!"
But since then, her profile has soared, and Hackney has grown into the role.
Her book, "All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir," was released on July 28 to widespread praise. The New York Times favorably compared it to 'Hillbilly Elegy,' by Vice President JD Vance, gushing, "we finally have an Appalachian memoir worthy of its origins, by a Gen Z writer — an eighth-generation Appalachian — who is too smart, and too authentically of her place, to reinscribe stereotypes."
A lot of writers want to compare "All That's Unseen" to "Hillbilly Elegy" – but that's unfair. "All That's Unseen" stands on its own – tracing Hackney's youth in Tazewell, her growing participation in the local Pentecostal church, her relationship with an aspiring pastor, and her decision to leave her home community to go to college – at Harvard. That's where she took a writing course taught by nonfiction author Michael Pollan, who quickly took note.
"I started writing these essays about what it was like to be from Appalachia, and my experiences there. Michael took an interest in it, and connected me with his agent, who was also very interested in my story, and we worked together to flesh out those essays into a book."
"All That's Unseen" charts Hackney's childhood growing up, in a place people frequently mispronounce.
"Most people are like TAZEwell, and I'm like, Ugh! Nails on a chalkboard!"
And her time as a devout member of her church after she began worrying about going to hell if she wasn't saved.
"I got very deeply involved in the church after that, through my adolescence, until I got involved with an older guy and we attended church together," Hackney said. "He ended up not being the person that I thought he was, and after our relationship fell apart, I really relied heavily on my church. But then I found out that a lot of our church friends were siding with him, even though he’d done this really terrible thing."
Hackney also details what happened when she tried to leave her home community for college.
"And even when I first got accepted to Harvard, I had people that were telling me, 'It’s going to be so hard.,'" Hackney said. "I had somebody tell me they only accepted me because I was going to fill a diversity box, which I thought was very mean. But I also kind of believed it a little bit. I was like, 'What in the world would they want with me from Tazewell County, Virginia?' Like, what do I have to offer?"
And how she was received as an Appalachian: "When I was living in New England, I was just constantly bombarded with these stereotypes everywhere I went. People just thought these very strange things about me because I was from Appalachia. So, yeah, I wanted to write about my story, write about my experiences from my perspective, and just give a little insight about what it's like to be from there."
Hackney has since moved back to the region. She lives in Nelson County with her family and works at the University of Virginia. "All That's Unseen" is sitting at #12 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction.
