Harper College author shares historically accurate novel

M. Glenn Taylor doesn't say much to his English and fiction-writing students at Harper College about his first novel, "The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart."

"I don't really talk about it in class," said the author, a hint of his West Virginian upbringing in his voice.

Maybe it's modesty, maybe it's that the work of fiction, set against a historically accurate backdrop, speaks for itself.

If any of his students walked into a Barnes and Noble book store this fall, it would be hard for them to miss their professor's achievement.

The book is a Fall 2008 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection.

Taylor, who recently read selections from the book in Harper's Drama Lab, earned a master's degree in creative writing at Texas State University. He came to Harper in 2002.

But it was his earlier life, as a child in Huntington, W.Va., where the culture of the coal mining life is so prevalent, that inspired him to move from short story fiction to novel writing.

"I had always been a little bit fascinated with union coal miners," he said.

The story, told as a series of recollections by the title character at the age of 107, revolves around the sometimes violent struggles faced by the working class.

Taylor said it took a couple of years to complete the book, published by the West Virginia University Press and released in June.

"I did a lot of research and became very disciplined. When I wasn't teaching, I was writing. I got very into it, almost to the point of obsession. That's how books are written, I guess," he said. "You do become a little bit obsessed."

He said one of his aims with the book was to dispel stereotypes of people living in Appalachia and instead describe an authentic reality of the people he grew up with in the place where he grew up.

Taylor, who is married and the father of two, went back to his childhood roots, stopping in Huntington, Charleston and Morgantown, W.Va., on a summer and fall book tour that also took him to North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. He'll finish up the tour with a stop in Portland, Ore.

And then it's back to the classroom at Harper and work on his next book, already in progress.

Taylor's free reading, accompanied by live banjo and guitar music, was part of the college's Array of Authors series.

The Palatine campus also hosted visits from authors Thomas E. Kennedy and Stephen Prothero in October.