Spring 2021 Phyllis W. Moore Online Author Series to Feature Author Matthew Neill Null

The spring 2021 Phyllis W. Moore Online Author Series, presented by the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center at Fairmont State University, concludes at 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 23 with a reading by author Matthew Neill Null.  

“I’m thrilled that we can continue, even during this pandemic, to offer opportunities for our community to engage in literature and the arts,” said Mirta M. Martin, Fairmont State University President. 

Null’s debut novel, Honey from the Lion, is set against the backdrop of the timber industry during the Gilded Age, highlighting labor unrest and the deforestation of West Virginia’s virgin forests. Honey from the Lion was shortlisted for the L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize.  

This free online event will be hosted on Cisco WebEx and is open to the public at www.fairmontstate.edu/NullWebEx. 

Null, a West Virginia native, possesses an MFA from the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His collection of short stories, Allegheny Front, was a finalist Foreword’s INDIE collection of the year. His stories appear in American Short Fiction, Ecotone, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, the PEN /O. Henry Prize Stories and the Best American Mystery Stories 2014. He is also a recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Mary McCarthy Prize and the Michener–Copernicus Society of America Award. 

The theme of the 2021 Phyllis Wilson Moore Online Author Series is labor and the struggles of West Virginia’s working folk. Moore is a graduate of Fairmont State College, nurse, poet and the creator of the West Virginia Literary Map. She donated her research about West Virginia authors to Fairmont State University.  

The Phyllis Wilson Moore West Virginia Authors Archive is housed at the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center and is available to student and faculty researchers. Although the Center is currently open to Fairmont State University students, it is closed to community visitors. For information about online events hosted by the Folklife Center, call 304-367-4403.  

Phyllis W. Moore Online Author SeriesFrank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife CenterMatthew Neill NullMirta Martin