“So whatever I am going through in life, I’m writing about,” Melissa shares. “I was kind of like in a self-deprecating humor way writing these poems and putting them in a folder on my desktop that I just titled a middle aged woman rages. I’m thinking here she goes again, flying off the handle, flying off the rails, but then I started to look at the poems that were in there and certainly some of them have expected imagery and anger, but a lot of them are quiet or they’re full of sadness and grief or just giving up. I started to think about anger’s role in grief and anger’s role in sadness and then that joke I put on the file folder name became the guiding principle behind it.”

Ms. Helton continues. “Most people I come in contact with are through my professional experiences so I constantly worry about separating the professional and private. I work at a nonprofit in a conservative part of Central Appalachia. That’s a constant worry. But the crux of A Middle-Aged Woman Rages is the impulse to unsilence yourself. The core of the book is about standing up. Not sure who said the quote, but it’s speak your voice, speak your mind even if your voice shakes. I’m going to put this out in the universe with all good intention and faith and if there are repercussions, then so be it. Because you can’t tell the truth without being daring.”

Curious now? You can check out A Middle-Aged Woman Rages from Accents Publishing by following this link, www.accents-publishing.com. Melissa Jørgenrud Helton is Literary Arts Director of Hindman Settlement School, a cultural nonprofit in Knott County, Kentucky. Her work has been published in Shenandoah, Women Speak, Still: The Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Norwegian Writers Climate Campaign, and more. Her chapbooks include Inertia: A Study (Finishing Line Press), and Hewn (Workhorse), and her first full length collection is A Middle-Aged Woman Rages (Accents Publishing). She is editor of the anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky (University Press of KY) and Untelling, the literary and arts magazine of Hindman Settlement School. Her work has been supported through the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and has been awarded the George Scarbrough Poetry Prize, the Emma Bell Miles Nonfiction Prize, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and once won her a piece of key lime pie. She has been honored with the Mildred Haun Award of Excellence and designation as a Kentucky Colonel, and she is a dual citizen in the United Kingdom. Melissa was also a Finalist for the 2024 James Baker Hall Book Award.