American · b. 1971
Silas House is an American novelist, poet, playwright, essayist and music journalist from Kentucky. He was born in 1971 and grew up in Laurel County, in the Appalachian foothills. His novels include Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo, Eli the Good, Same Sun Here (written with Neela Vaswani), Southernmost and Lark Ascending. He has also written nonfiction and a play, and has long written about music for outlets such as No Depression. House served as Poet Laureate of Kentucky in 2022 and 2023. He teaches at Berea College and has taught in the Spalding University low-residency MFA program. He is an environmental activist, and his work and public speaking often address mountaintop removal mining, rural life and LGBTQ identity in the South. His books have won the Southern Book Award, the Appalachian Book of the Year award and the Lillian Smith Book Award, among other honors. All These Ghosts is his first full-length poetry collection.