Alba, a two-book series telling the story of the historical Macbeths, launches March 2025 with Upon the Corner of the Moon. I've published six other novels, the most recent being Dead Hand, a sequel to To the Bones. My 2021 novel In the Lonely Backwater received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. I'm also the author of three poetry collections, all from Press 53, and a collection of short fiction.

These short stories are primarily set in Appalachia.

I teach fiction workshops at this school each year.

Retired full professor of English-creative writing.

To the Bones takes a different look--sometimes macabre, sometimes satiric—at the legacy of the coal industry in Appalachia. This genre-busting mashup, to be published in spring 2019 by West Virginia University Press, has elements of the Appalachian tall tale, cinematic zombie story (Night of the Living Dead), Celtic legend, quest lierature, and and old-fashioned love story.

My novel Blood Clay, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award in General Fiction, was published March 2011 by Press 53.

"Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse" is being published by Press 53. The narrative in two voices has been a decade in development, including a week-long workshop at the Coney Island Museum. This the story of Dinah, a biracial orphan born in Appalachia in the 1930s and “given” to the childless Gastons to raise. She is gifted with psychic ability and eventually finds her way out of exploitation into a life on the road as a hootchie-kootchie dancer and fortune-teller. When afflicted with vitiligo, she adds a turn as a “freak” called the Leopard Lady. Self-educated with the King James Bible and a volume of Shakespeare, her voice blends Elizabethan phrasings with Appalachian and carnival speech. When a dropout from divinity school joins the show, they begin a debate over the nature of God and man–each seeking an understanding of their place in the universe–that becomes a close friendship.

My first full-length collection of poetry, Wake Wake Wake, came out from this dynamic small press in 2006.

Neena Gathering, first published in 1988, has been brought back by Permuted Press as an Audible book, e-book, and trade paperback.

"Hotel Worthy" is my second poetry collection.Joseph Bathanti, former North Carolina poet laureate, says, "There abides in its pages an uncanny past wrought into poems that spring from a memory – from a vast, liturgical acumen – that unites the dead with the living, restores the abandoned, returns the missing. Nieman knows the names of things, how those things piece together, how they sunder; and, while she refuses to lie, her truths are exquisite. This is a startling book. The language – its lyric nuance, its plaintive harmonies, its ceremonial beauty – is unforgettable. In the words of the poet, “Each blow of wood on wood / sets ripples on the water: / deo gratias, deo gratias.” Deo gratias indeed – for Hotel Worthy."

I read and select poetry for the quarterly issues of this online journal as well as the "decimals" updates.

I was one of the founding editors of the literary journal, and a host of the associated annual literary festival

I was executive editor for two years, capping a 15-year career as reporter and city editor. As executive editor, I led a team that won numerous state newspaper awards and the AP award for public service, while successfully taking a Freedom of Information case to the state Supreme Court.