John Michael Cummings

John Michael Cummings (born 1963 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia) is an American novelist and short story writer. His novels include The Night I Freed John Brown (Penguin Group, 2008), winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People;^[1]Ugly To Start With (West Virginia University Press, 2011), IndieFab Award Finalist; and Don't Forget Me, Bro (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015). Don't Forget Me, Bro has been excerpted in The Chicago Tribune.

Cummings' short stories and essays have appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals, including North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Iowa Review. His short fiction has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. His short story "The Scratchboard Project" received an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007.

Cummings’ fiction is almost always set in West Virginia, but not clearly in the Mountain State most of us imagine. His young adult debut novel, The Night I Freed John Brown, takes place in the historic village where the white abolitionist inflamed hawkish sentiments that helped provoke the Civil War. Cummings’ novel portrays a late twentieth century local family dealing with the town’s tourists and their worldly wise influences. The harsh father, with his intolerant, throwback attitudes, is set up as the anti-John Brown. The novel, using "history as a narrative tool,"^[2] hit the top ten for Black History Month reading chosen by USA TODAY.

A collection of thirteen short stories billed as a novel in the form of stories, Ugly To Start With scatters its settings in and around Harpers Ferry, showing the rural side of West Virginia many have come to cherish and some to loathe. The stories, all previously published in literary journals as diverse as Confrontation and The Iowa Review, feature a quickly growing-up version of the young protagonist by another name in The Night I Freed John Brown. "A balance of grit and wonder,"^[3] the collection straddles between young adult and adult literature. The stories actually predate Cummings' debut novel by some ten years and were tailored for the collection to have one continuous narrative timeline."^[4]

In Cummings’ first adult novel, Don’t Forget Me, Bro, he departs from Jefferson County and plunks a complex tale of supposed schizophrenia and genuine emotional abuse in the heart of Appalachia. The novel embraces “what happens when mental illness intersects with abuse, poverty, and misinformation in the South.”^[5] Characters are marked by hate and blame and defy reconciliation over the death of the oldest brother at forty-five. A compromise is reached when the youngest brother realizes he is causing other deaths, as it were, by trying to forcibly undo one.

Blurbed by more than a dozen West Virginia newspapers, the novel bears authenticity by a state native achieving “a linguistic and emotional range and sensitivity that are truly remarkable.”^[6]

Cummings lives in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.^[7]

Works

Short stories

• "Missing," Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol.10, Spring/Summer 1992
• "Like Apes," Berkeley Fiction Review, No. 11, 1992
• "Fourteen Seconds," The North American Review, Summer 01
• "Mountains and Seas," Sou’wester, 01
• "The Fence," Confrontation, No. 82/83 Spring/Summer 03
• "The Gun Wall," North Dakota Quarterly, Winter/Spring 03
• "Rising to the Occasion," South Dakota Review, Winter 04
• "The Scratchboard Project," The Iowa Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 06 (Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007)
• "Treasure Hunt," The Chattahoochee Review, Winter 07, Vol. 27, No.2
• "Marshmallow People," The Kenyon Review, Winter 08, Vol. 30, No.1

Young adult novels

• The Night I Freed John Brown. New York: Philomel Books (Penguin Group), 2008. ISBN 978-0-399-25054-5
• Ugly to Start With Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-935-97808-4

Adult novels

• Don't Forget Me, Bro. Texas: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-1-62288-078-2

Novellas

• The House My Father. Finalist, 2006 Miami University Novella Contest.
• Chimney Rock. Semi-finalist, Winnow Press 2004 First Book Award for Fiction.

References

• Kirkus Reviews, The Night I Freed John Brown review
• Teen Book Review, The Night I Freed John Brown summary
• Teen Reads, The Night I Freed John Brown review
• John Brown (abolitionist)
• West Virginia University Press, Ugly to Start With summary
• The Truth About Lies, Ugly To Start With review
• Typographical Era, Don't Forget Me, Bro review
• Book Ideas, Don't Forget Me, Bro analysis

Specific

External links

• John Michael Cummings’ Homepage