West Virginia Women Writers: Denise Giardina

State Library Services
1900 Kanawha Blvd. E.
Culture Center, Building 9
Charleston, WV 25305

Phone: (304) 558-2045
Email: wvlcref@wv.gov

Born and raised in the West Virginia coalfields, Denise Giardina is an ordained Episcopal Church deacon, a community activist, and a former candidate for governor of WV.  Her novels, fictionalizing historical characters and events, have been critically acclaimed and recognized with a number of literary prizes.

Giardina grew up in a West Virginia coal mining camp called Black Wolf. Many family members worked in underground mines, but her mother was a nurse and her father a bookkeeper for a coal company. They moved to Charleston when the mining camp closed. She graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973, later earning a Master’s in Divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary.

2004 --  Included on the West Virginia Literary Map, From A Place Called Solid: West Virginia and its Writers, from the West Virginia Folk Life Center at Fairmont State University.

2002  --  Appalachian Heritage Writer–in-Residence at Shepherd University

2000  --  Lille D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing  from Morehead State University

1999  --  Fisk Fiction Prize, Saints and Villains

1998  --  Thomas and Lille D. Chaffin Award from Moorehead State University

1998  --  Emory and Henry College Literary Festival

1997  --  West Virginia Library Association Literary Merit Award 

1996  --  National Endowment for the Arts Grant

1993  --  American Book Award, The Unquiet Earth 

1992  --  Weatherford Award for Significant Appalachian Work, Fiction, Unquiet Earth 

1992  --  Lillian Smith Book Award, Storming Heaven 

1988  --  Appalachian Book of the Year, Saints and Villains 

1988  --  National Endowment for the Arts Grant

1987  --  Weatherford Award for Significant Appalachian Work, Fiction, Storming Heaven