Ohioana Ohio Legacy Citation: 2008
Lisa Watts
Native of Cleveland OH
Editor: Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio
Lisa Watts, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, recognized that some of the best writing today is coming out of her home state,
so she solicited various authors and asked them to contribute to the anthology
Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio, published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press.
Twenty writers contributed to Good Roots; poets, essayists, humorists, reviewers, novelists, and editors, and all credited their
Ohio origins with making them the unique people that they are. The opening essay, “Goofy Ohio Stories and Other Sweet Things,” is by
popular writer R. L. Stine, and novelist Mark Winegardner wrote the Afterword; “Toward a Literature of the Midwest.”
Of Good Roots, The Bloomsbury Review said, “It’s hard to find an anthology whose entries are consistently well written and
delightful to read.” The reviewer for Cleveland Scene, Denise Grollmus, said “By the end of the book’s 201 pages, you can safely say
that you’ve traversed every corner of our great state in perfect prose.” And UMass Amherst Magazine noted that the collection of
writers “reads like a literary Who’s Who, including four Pulitzer Prizes, several national Book Awards, and many prestigious fellowships.”
“The writing of the authors gathered in
Good Roots is as varied as their backgrounds,” says Jeff Kallet of Ohio University Press, “Yet what they have to say about their
roots resonates with a shared heritage, a sense of what is universal and enduring about growing up in the heartland.”
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