Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books whose work frequently appears in The Atlantic and The New York Times. He is a former commentator for NPR and his work has been widely published in journals and magazines such as Time, The Advocate, Oxford American, Garden & Gun, and many others. He has lectured internationally and is widely regarded as one of the major writers of the American South.

House was born and grew up in Southeastern Kentucky.

House’s first novel, Clay’s Quilt (2001), is now known as a foundational text for Appalachian Literature. Its two companion novels, A Parchment of Leaves (2003) and The Coal Tattoo (2005), were recently re-issued in new editions and are now known as The Appalachian Trilogy. House wrote Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal (2009) with Jason Howard. The book was called “revelatory” by esteemed author and oral historian Studs Terkel, in his last blurb. House’s fourth novel, Eli the Good (2009) emerged as a number one bestseller on the Southern lists and received the first annual Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library system, an award given to a book for use in the ESL and literacy programs of New York City. Same Sun Here (2012), co-written with Neela Vaswani, has received more than a dozen awards including the Nautilus, the Parents Choice, the E.B. White Honor Book Award, and many others. In 2018 his novel Southernmost appeared on Best of the Year lists of many magazines and was given the Weatherford Award and long listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. House has also written three plays that have been produced throughout the country.

In 2020 House received the highest honor for an artist in the Commonwealth of Kentucky when he was given the Governor’s Award for the Arts. He has also won the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Judy Gaines Young Award, the Intellectual Freedom Prize, the Caritas Medal, three honorary doctorates, and many other honors. In 2021 he was chosen as the Appalachian of the Year by a poll conducted by the podcast Appodlachia.

House served as a writer-in-residence at Eastern Kentucky University in 2004 and 2005 and at Lincoln Memorial University from 2005 to 2010. At LMU he also directed the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. In 2010 House became the NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College. He has served on the fiction faculty at the Naslund Mann Graduate School of Writing since 2005. House is also an editor at the University Press of Kentucky’s Fireside Industries imprint.

His latest novel, Lark Ascending, published in September 2022.