When my twin brother died at 27 of an accidental overdose, my stoic father cried. The sound he made was nothing like I had ever heard. It was an animal cry, primal in its pain, and I will never forget it.
I started writing Minerville, my debut novel, to try to understand a man like my father. He is a third generation coal miner who was raised to suppress his emotions, a man who prides himself on working hard and providing for his family. Over time, the book became an exploration of a life spent working a mile underground and how that labor shapes a man and his community—and how it eventually shaped me, the son who left home.
I was born and raised in the southwest corner of Virginia, twelve miles south of the West Virginia state line, in a small coal town not unlike my fictional Minerville. My father mined coal. His father mined coal. His father’s father mined coal. I was the first in four generations to go to college, and I know well the price you pay to leave. That cost is at the heart of everything I write.
I became a daily newspaper reporter, working my way from Virginia to North Carolina to Texas to Maryland, where I worked at The Baltimore Sun, before ending my journalism career at The Oregonian in Portland, about as far from Appalachia as a person can go. Those 24 years spent telling other people’s stories polished skills I’d need to tell one of my own. Along the way I earned an MFA in fiction writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. For years, I drafted Minerville during weekday mornings before the sun rose, and on weekends, all the while working fulltime and raising a family. An excerpt from the novel was awarded the Jean Ritchie Fellowship for Appalachian Writing, and I’ve also received an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. I’m at work on a second novel, a ghost story set at a small liberal arts college in Appalachia.
Although Portland is far from the place I will always call home, I have lived here for twenty-two years with my wife, Karen. We have two adult sons, two golden retrievers, and a kitten named Earl.
I write the Substack newsletter First to Leave and can be found at larrybingham.com.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Larry Bingham’s Minerville in 2028.
