About
Odana is a fifth- or sixth-generation Appalachian— it depends on whom you ask. She left for a few years just to have the unique pleasure of coming home. She is a gardener, a dog person, and someone usually found in muddy boots.
Her work can be found in Women of Appalachia: Women Speak Volumes III and IV, About Place Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the 2024 recipient of the New River Gorge Creative Residency.
She spent four years at the University of Pittsburgh where she found her voice but forgot to graduate.
From an interview at Rolling Pepperoni:
Can you tell me more about your writing? What do you write about?
My writing is an act of trying to stay connected to a place that I sometimes feel is slipping away. Nostalgia is one of my greatest burdens and flaws, but I think it is important to illustrate that nostalgia does not always turn into the toxic otherism that we see so prevalent today. I try to bear witness to the diverse reality of Appalachia, and West Virginia in particular. Mountain sorrow seems to be pretty en vogue today and I have seen my fair share of class tourists taking up mantles they have not earned and rewriting the histories they never knew. I think it’s my responsibility as a woman of Appalachia to exist as loudly as I can in opposition to the men that talk about my home as if they know her.