Amanda E. Hayes is an assistant professor of English at Kent State University–Tuscarawas. She is the author of the 2019 College English Association of Ohio's Nancy Dasher Award winning book, The Politics of Appalachian Rhetoric.
In exploring the ways that Appalachian people speak and write, Hayes raises the importance of knowing and respecting communication styles within a marginalized culture. Diving deep into the region’s historical roots—especially those of the Scotch-Irish and their influence on her own Appalachian Ohio—Hayes reveals a rhetoric with its own unique logic, utility, and poetry. Throughout, Hayes blends conventional scholarship with autobiography, storytelling, and dialect, illustrating Appalachian rhetoric’s validity as a means of creating and sharing knowledge.
