Radio Bristol Book Club

Tune in to WBCM Radio Bristol as our Book Club explores Trampoline by Robert Gipe.

Date: Thursday, May 27, 2021

Time: 12:00 p.m. EDT

Location: Tune in to WBCM Radio Bristol

Readers from Birthplace of Country Music Museum and the Bristol Public Library are coming together to explore books inspired by our region with this monthly program that airs on WBCM Radio Bristol. 

Hosted by Bristol Public Library Executive Director Tonia Kestner and Birthplace of Country Music Museum Head Curator Dr. René Rodgers, the Radio Bristol Book Club airs weekly every 4th Thursday.

Anyone can join the Radio Bristol Book Club, simply by reading along and tuning in! Look for this month’s selection at your local library and read prior to show. Be sure and join the conversation by emailing your questions or comments to info@birthplaceofcountrymusic.org with the subject line “Radio Bristol Book Club Comments” and we may address them on the air!

Book discussions will dig deep into the feelings and questions raised by each selection, learn more about the authors, and celebrate the joys of being a bookworm! The discussions are often followed by an interview with the author or other related interview.

Listeners may tune in to Radio Bristol at 100.1 FM in the Bristol area, online at ListenRadioBristol.org, or download the free Radio Bristol mobile app.

Trampoline

Dawn Jewell is fifteen. She is restless, curious, and wry. She listens to Black Flag, speaks her mind, and joins her grandmother’s fight against mountaintop removal mining almost in spite of herself. “I write by ear,” says Robert Gipe, and Dawn’s voice is the essence of his debut novel, Trampoline. She lives in eastern Kentucky with her addict mother and her Mamaw, whose stance against the coal companies has earned her the community’s ire. Jagged and honest, Trampoline is a powerful portrait of a place struggling with the economic and social forces that threaten and define it. Inspired by oral tradition and punctuated by Gipe’s raw and whimsical drawings, it is above all about its heroine, Dawn, as she decides whether to save a mountain or save herself; be ruled by love or ruled by anger; remain in the land of her birth or run for her life.

About the Author

Born in North Carolina in 1963 and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee, Robert Gipe is a child of the Tennessee Eastman Company, Pals Sudden Service, and the voice of the Vols, John Ward. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Gipe earned his Masters in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has worked as a pickle packer, a forklift driver, and eventually came to work as Marketing & Educational Services Director for Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky where he worked with public school teachers on arts and education projects. Since 1997 he has been Director of the Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College in Cumberland, Kentucky, and is a producer of Higher Ground, a series of community musical drams based on oral histories and grounded in discussion of local issues. He is also the faculty coordinator of the Crawdad student arts series. He has had fiction published in Appalachian Heritage and has attended the Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman every year since 2006.