Rate My Professor Shawna Green

As a creative writer, Green authored You Have to Save Something, a poignant Appalachian memoir that captures her experiences growing up in a gendered, blue-collar, working-class family in West Virginia. The book employs a blend of narrative and lyrical prose, eschewing linear chronology to weave essays that unpack complex familial relationships, motherhood, grief, and the essence of home and values spanning from childhood to the present. It evocatively depicts the uninhibited play of childhood—turning armrests into horses, electrical cords into communicators, sycamore trees into lookout posts, and even flood waters into playgrounds—while confronting harsher realities of gender expectations, loss, poverty, cruelty, imagination, and unexpected kindness. Green's work contributes to the rich tradition of Appalachian literature and creative nonfiction within the field of Literature. She engages the academic community through faculty talks, such as her presentation on her memoir at the Ohio State University Newark campus. Additionally, her essays have been published in literary journals including Peatsmoke Journal ("Mom Cell," Fall 2020), Dead Mule (memoir, October 2020), Big Whoopie Deal ("Catching a Rabbit"), and Chicago Story Press ("As I See You"). Through her teaching and writing, Shawna Green enriches the study of Literature and composition at Ohio State University.