Daniel Leidig Appalachian Writer Series

The Emory & Henry Daniel Leidig Appalachian Writer Series (formerly Appalachian Literary Festival) celebrates the many forms of Appalachian narratives, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, memoir, digital storytelling, and the creative arts. The Series offers a student-centered, publicly accessible opportunity to celebrate the work of a particular artist or artists, and to teach from and about narratives rooted in Appalachia.

2025 Writer Series Author

Carter Sickels

This year’s author of the Daniel Leidig Appalachian Writer Series is Carter Sickles. Lyceum credit.

Speaker Event Information

Date: Thursday, October 2, 2025
Location: Kennedy∼Reedy Theatre, McGlothlin Center for the Arts

About Carter Sickels

Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star, published by Hub City Press, and winner of the 2021 Southern Book Prize and the Weatherford Award. The Prettiest Star was also selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book of 2020 by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury 2012), an Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His essays and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Joyland, Guernica, Catapult, and Electric Literature. Carter is the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award, and earned fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and MacDowell. He is an assistant professor of English & Creative Writing in the MFA Program at North Carolina State University.

www.cartersickels.com