Her book, “Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878” (University Press of Kentucky, 2011), is the winner of the 2011 Weatherford Award for the best work of non-fiction illuminating the Appalachian South and the 2013 Phi Beta Kappa Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence in Research at Virginia Tech. Her current research projects include environmental health in Tazewell County, Va., and rural-set ‘backwoods’ horror movies. She is program chair for the Appalachian Studies Conference to be held March 9-12, 2017, on the Virginia Tech campus.