The stories in RUIN contemplate our various dystopias, worlds riven by the slow-motion chaos of climate collapse or political unraveling, by the late-term effects of a series of communal failures. But it is not the chaos or loss that is Hoffman’s subject… Hoffman shows us that it is the relationships and alliances we form, and the love we defiantly put back into the world, that are the best, perhaps the only, path to building a better world.
—Ranbir Sidhu, author of Deep Singh Blue
I am so thankful that trans activist and scholar Z. Zane McNeill brought together fifteen scholars, artists, and activists to share their nuanced, vibrant take on all things Appalachian and queer. Readers will appreciate the honest, raw call-outs of racism, gendered violence, and environmental injustices that simultaneously reclaim indigeneity, Blackness, non-binary genders, and queerness as local in origin and equipped to build new queer archives that push and gather us together.
—Mary L. Gray, co-editor of Queering the Countryside
