Melissa Helton may be an Ohio native with dual US/UK citizenship, but now she’s proud to call Kentucky her “found home.”

Helton did not come into her queerness until she was raising a family in the state. She would read WLW (Women Loving Women) literature “for research,” which led her and others to begin questioning her sexuality.  And that discovery led to creative expression in a safe space – writers in the Appalachian community who embraced her.

“Honest” is the word she uses to describe her writing, as she wants to represent the positivity and community stemming from Appalachia. But her rage plays a part too.

“I don’t know what else to do with my rage except turn it into art and somehow try to survive it,” said Helton.

Appalachia has been stereotyped as impoverished and lacking in education, but Helton uses her writing to create a new narrative.

“It’s a tightrope of being authentic and wanting to show the nuance and the reality of the place or the life, knowing that people who want to do you harm will use it against you,” Helton said. 

Her work focuses on love and her identity as a bisexual person and addresses bi-phobic and pan-phobic rhetoric with the hope of challenging harmful beliefs held by some in the LGBTQ+ community. 

In an unpublished poem, “Advice to the Newly Polyamorous,” Helton uses that tightrope to demonstrate the thin line she must walk in order to convey her truth. She writes, in the poem, about the truth she lives in her identity and how she must account for the ways in which people may use it against her.

“If you are bisexual+, you are perpetuating

a stereotype that we’re all non-monogamous

and promiscuous and can’t choose or commit

to just one partner.

Don’t let that shit get you down.

It’s not your responsibility to always be the good example,

to disprove the presuppositions.”

 

Melissa said she did not understand her queerness at first. She believed she was seeing beauty in women and non-binary individuals through an artistic lens, but it instead developed into learning more about who she is as a person. 

“[Someone asked] ‘Do you have queer tendencies?’ and it wasn’t until my mid-30’s and someone asked me that question that I was like, maybe this isn’t just living with an artistic eye, that maybe I do have the ability to love people of different genders,” said Helton.

Motherhood, Menopause and Rage

Her work also focuses on themes of motherhood, menopause and rage towards the American political system. Helton said that she uses her writing as an escape and a way to cope with the less-than-ideal situations life brings. This includes navigating the harsh changes within the female body, parenting young children and maintaining the right to one’s own body in the current political climate.

“A Middle-Aged Woman Rages” will be Helton’s debut collection of poetry. The collection focuses on the previously mentioned themes and allows her to explore and process them. She has written about these themes in previous works, but visiting them again allows for deeper processing and understanding.

Immigration is another undercurrent in her work. Helton’s father is an immigrant from the United Kingdom and she feels as if she has a complicated relationship with the current attacks towards immigrants and immigration that are rooted in racism.

“[This is] The privilege and the position I have for interrogating my white immigration history when my people aren’t being targeted,” said Helton. “So how do I responsibly look at that in our current culture that is hostile towards immigrants and their families when they’re not white, when they’re not Christian?”

Education takes precedence in the representation of Appalachia

The welcoming community within Appalachia is at the forefront of Helton’s pieces, as she has garnered a found family and home within the mountains of Appalachia.

Helton works as the literary arts director at the Hindman Settlement School. The school, established in 1902, has now developed into a non-profit organization providing education for the creative arts for students in the area.

The Ironwood Writers Studio is a program Helton is involved with, which takes place at the Hindman Settlement School. The camp, designed for writers aged 14-19, creates and fosters a safe space to learn and grow as people and as creatives. 

“When my high school writers turn in their evaluations at the end of the Ironwood Writers Studio and they say they felt respected, safe, accepted, and valued, that is all the legacy I’ll ever need,” said Helton. “When they say they are going to sign up for a creative writing class at school, that’s a victory. When a student says they finally met other kids who “get it,” I know we’re on the right path.”

The school allows for Appalachian culture to be preserved and for its rich history to be understood for what it actually is and not the stereotypes that the region has been given, said Helton.

The writing community has embraced her. She has found a group of like-minded writers at the school, but also in her writing circles and peers that writing has allowed her access to.

Helton did not come out as bisexual until she was raising a family in the region and the support from those around her in the Appalachian writing community allowed her to understand her identity fully. 

“The queer Appalachian writers, they’re the ones who help me be brave. Without them and their support, I don’t think I would be as brave, especially when I see the brave things they write,” said Helton. “They make me want to stand up and want to say my part of the story as well.”

Her personal writing community creates a safety net, which is as important as ever in a time of such tension, she said. 

“[The Appalachian writing community] really has been such an accepting community.The scholars are very diverse, very celebratory of identity, and having the writers made me feel like Appalachia was home,” said Helton. “If I didn’t have that network of writers, I don’t know if this would be my forever home, but with them, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

As her writing evolves, Helton is looking to write more essays and fiction. Her pieces are also moving to focus more on immigration, as current political actions target those individuals. 

“We write to process and understand; we write to quarantine things; and we write to remember. Art is a core human experience, however creativity expresses itself in our lives. We do it to process the world and we do it to process our interaction with the world,” said Helton.