Hickory – Hickory author Rhonda Browning White is launching her debut novel, “Filling the Big Empty,” at a launch party on Saturday, November 16th at 3:00pm at Olde Hickory Station on 232 Government Avenue SW. White will be reading and signing copies of her novel, and the casual event is open to the public.

“Filling the Big Empty” tells the story of a young Appalachian couple struggling to create a family and make a homeplace, while dealing with environmental devastation, betrayal, and greed. Simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful, White’s story speaks powerfully to the all-too-common issues of opioid addiction, infertility, and grief, offering grace and hope to her characters and those who read about them. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia in scenes from the coal mines and vineyards of West Virginia to the sprawling piedmont of North Carolina, Filling the Big Empty demands that we pay attention to our environment and what it means to us.

Renowned North Carolina author Ron Rash states of White’s novel, “Filling the Big Empty places Rhonda Browning White among our region’s best novelists,” and national bestselling author Stewart O’Nan lauds, “Rhonda Browning White knows how powerfully things can go wrong when people feel that they have no choice.” 

White received the 2019 Press 53 (Winston-Salem, NC) Award for Short Fiction for her debut short-story collection, The Lightness of Water & Other Stories. Her work appears in Ignatian Review, Qu Literary Journal, Hospital Drive, Heartwood Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Still Toe Review, Ploughshares Writing Lessons, Tiny Text, NewPages, South 85 Journal, The Skinny Poetry Journal, WV Executive, Mountain Echoes, Gambit, Bluestone Review, and in the anthologies Appalachia (Un)Broken, Ice Cream Secrets, Appalachia’s Last Stand, and Mountain Voices. White holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina and was awarded the Sterling Watson Fellowship and the Les Standiford Scholarship from Eckard College’s Writers in Paradise in St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Rhonda Browning White is employed by Piedmont Nephrology & Hypertension Associates in Hickory and Morganton, and she teaches Creative Writing for Redhawk Publications’ writers series programming at Catawba Valley Community College.

For more information and to buy a copy of the book go to: https://tinyurl.com/FillingTheBigEmpty