When Professor of English John Somerville took over the English department’s Visiting Writers Program in the 1990s, he took on a job he never would have anticipated. Twenty-five years later, however, he called the job “a surprise and a joy.” Beginning in the fall of 2019, Associate Professor of English Dutton Kearney will take over...
“Salvation on Sand Mountain” reads like a Flannery O’Connor story come to life. In her stories, men steal girls’ false legs and literally eat the pages of the Bible. In Dennis Covington’s book, snake handlers call down the Holy Ghost, cast out demons, and risk their lives each time they reach into the serpent boxes....
Dennis Covington was born in 1948 and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. In college, he studied under American short story writer Peter Taylor at the University of Virginia, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. Covington was drafted upon graduation, and served two years in the U.S. Army before entering the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, whose...
The small Dow A and B conference room bustled with eager students and excited professors who awaited author Dennis Covington’s reading from his renowned, “Salvation on Sand Mountain,” an account detailing his experience with Christian snakehandlers in the Appalachian Mountains. Professor of English John Somerville Jr. invited Covington to speak on Feb. 18 as part...