Appalachian Authors Alliance Everybody's welcome on the porch.

A home for Appalachia's storytellers —
from the top of Pennsylvania to the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.

The Appalachian Authors Alliance connects the whole literary life of these mountains: the authors and poets, yes — and the independent bookstores, the libraries, the illustrators, the small presses, and the people who keep the porch lights on for all of them. Digital-first, pan-regional, and radically welcoming.

Everybody's welcome on the porch.

Explore the Bookstore Directory Get a free listing
Sketch illustration of layered Appalachian ridges at golden hour, a river town with a white church steeple in the valley below.

From our authors' shelves

Meet all of our authors →

Launching with something real: 189 verified independent bookstores

We didn't start with a manifesto. We started with fieldwork — every independent bookstore in the Appalachian footprint, checked one by one: open, independent, and worth the drive. Eight states, from Pittsburgh's neighborhood shops to the mountain towns of North Carolina. No chains, and no ghosts of stores that closed years ago.

Sketch of a small-town main street with an independent bookstore, warm windows full of books, mountains behind the rooftops. Sketch of a river bend meeting green foothills, a historic bridge and river town in morning fog, a heron flying low.

For readers

Find the real bookstores of Appalachia — the ones with a shop dog, a local-authors shelf, and somebody who remembers what you bought last time.

For writers

These stores are where Appalachian books meet Appalachian readers. Know your region's rooms before you ask for a signing table.

For the stores

Your listing is free, forever. It's our thanks for keeping literature alive in the mountains. Claim or correct your listing.

A land of storytellers

Appalachia has always told its own stories — on porches and in church basements, in coal-camp ballads and ghost tales gathered by scholars like Ruth Ann Musick, in Affrilachian poetry and Cherokee tradition, and in every novel that got the mountains right. This alliance exists to celebrate all of it, without stereotype and without gatekeeping.

Sketch of a wooden front porch at dusk with rocking chairs, a lantern, a stack of books, and fireflies against misty blue ridges.

And yes — our home base is Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where the mountains meet the Ohio River. If a certain winged, red-eyed neighbor nudges a few more people toward the region's bookshelves, we'll take it. Story is the heritage; Mothman is just the invitation.

What's coming

The Journal

Regular writing about Appalachian literary life — the bookstores, the festivals, the writers, the history. First stories soon.

The Events Calendar

Festivals, readings, signings, and book fairs across the region — dates verified before we publish them. See the plan.

Membership

Full member profiles for the region's creators at a community price. Free listings first — membership when it's ready, not before. Read more.