By Madison Brown |Editor in Chief
Creative Writing professor Jim Minick's debut novel, Fire is Your Water, won the 2017 Appalachian Book of the Year Award at the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival in June."It's a great honor because it's an organization that I've been a part of for 25 years... And I was thrilled. I spent fifteen years working on this novel off and on, so to have that recognition - it's a great honor," Minick said.Fire is Your Water is the story of a young faith healer named Ada Franklin who lives in rural Pennsylvania in the 1950s. After losing her family's barn - and all the animals in it - to a fire, she finds that she has lost her ability to heal. Everything seems lost until she meets an agnostic man named Will Burke and his pet raven, Cicero.Minick said that the novel was loosely based on family stories and, that his great grandmother was actually a healer."My great grandmother was a healer. It was tradition. And there was a burning barn. [The novel] opens with a burning barn and two women go inside to save the animals, and that actually happened. In the novel, one of the characters is a healer, and she comes out of the fire changed. She can no longer heal. That probably did not happen in real life," he said.Minick said that he is working on two other projects. One being a nonfiction story about a tornado in Kansas, and the other a collection of essays that he has been working on over the years, though he doesn't know when those will be finished.Minick also offered his advice to anyone looking to get their work published."Don't be in a hurry to do it. Hone your craft. Know that if you are in it to be published, you are in it for the wrong reasons. It will come eventually, but don't rush it," he said.Fire is Your Water is also a finalist for the Library of Virginia Book of the Year Award. The winner of that contest will be announced soon. For more information contact Madison Brown at madbrown@augusta.edu