who is delaney mclemore?
Born in Corvallis, Oregon, Delaney McLemore grew up in the mid-Willamette Valley, exploring the outdoors and haunting libraries. At eighteen, Delaney moved to Huntington, West Virginia as the first Yeager Scholar from Oregon at Marshall University. Over five years, she was adopted by Appalachia, by the land and the people. After finishing her BA in English in 2013, Delaney traveled through the western United States, subsisting on sex work and hostess gigs. In 2016, she returned to West Virginia and began her pursuit of a Master's in Fine Arts in Nonfiction Writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Delaney earned her MFA summer of 2018.
Find Delaney's work in Entropy, The Activist Historical Review, gurl.com, VIDA Reviews, and keep your eye out for her first book, Deeper South: A Landscape of My Father.
Where's Delaney's Work?
A legal document from her parent's legal battle
lIE LIKE THEM: WRITING THE UNBELIEVABLE pARENT
Written for VIDA Reviews, in this essay Delaney reviews Miranda Doyle's debut memoir, A Book of Untruths, and explores her own process of writing a memoir about her parents.
http://www.vidaweb.org/lie-like-them-writing-the-unbelievable-parent/
I FOUND MY FATHER IN SHIT TOWN
The podcast S-Town took the podcast world by storm in 2017. Delaney was equally taken with the story of John McLemore, least of all because of their shared last name. In this essay, Delaney takes a look at those connections between her father and John McLemore, their madness and their beauty.
https://entropymag.org/i-found-my-father-in-shit-town/
Scenes from the forest outside the author's home.
Delaney (center, green jacket) with friends in central West Virginia
That Fella Ain’t Right: Whisper Networks in Appalachia
In this piece, Delaney weaves close-reading of Dorothy Allison's Two or Three Things I Know for Sure with her own understanding of what defines an Appalachian whisper network. This piece was written as a part of a series for The Activist Historical Review in their series on rape culture following the explosion of awareness of sexual violence in late 2017.
https://activisthistory.com/2018/01/05/that-fella-aint-right-whisper-networks-in-appalachia/
i learned to love my body...after i sold it
In her first piece of professional writing, Delaney shared some of her experience learning body positivity following her experience as a sex worker in West Virginia. The goal of this piece, published on a teen website, was to start conversations with teens about sex worker's rights in a way that didn't come from fear.
http://www.gurl.com/2017/06/16/i-learned-to-love-my-body-after-i-sold-it/
With some of my favorite people at WVWC
Contact Delaney
delaneymclemorewrites@gmail.com
541-321-9904