West Virginia

Joe Halstead currently lives in West Virginia with his wife and cat. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Five Quarterly, People Holding, Cheat River Review, Sundog Lit, The Stockholm Review, Sheepshead Review, and others. West Virginia is his first novel.

"A man seemingly trapped in the wreckage of NYC digs himself out of the digital avalanche and sprints back home screaming like a wolf. Joe Halstead's West Virginia is devastating and thrilling." -Bud Smith, author of F250 "In West Virginia, Joe Halstead tackles the rupture caused by inhabiting two very different spaces, while also bringing the malaise of the coal dust-choked hollers to life, painting a portrait that is both intriguing and unnerving." --Sam Slaughter, author of God in Neon "If Thomas Wolfe had sat down with J. D. Salinger and written a book, the result would have been something like Joe Halstead's incredible debut novel, West Virginia. Yet Halstead's immense scope and vision are all his own, bringing the reader from New York to the generic strip malls and run-down, poverty-stricken hollers of West Virginia, where the black-lunged coal miners are the lucky ones who get to eat at Applebee's restaurants on the weekends. It is a place of desperation, but one for which the author clearly holds a conflicted affinity. Told in a narrative voice that is unique and ultra-contemporary in its execution, West Virginia is a novel that will grip you by the throat and it will not let you go, even well after you're done reading it." --David Armand, author of The Pugilist's Wife