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WORK TITLE: Homeplace
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WEBSITE: https://www.johnlingan.com/
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STATE: MD
COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author, journalist, music critic, and educator. Instructor, Writer’s Center, Bethesda, MD; board member, Day Eight, Washington, DC.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and media outlets, including Atlantic, Baffler, BuzzFeed, Hazlitt, New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Oxford American, Pacific Standard, Slate, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
SIDELIGHTS
In his debut nonfiction book Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-tonk, journalist, music critic and writing instructor John Lingan tells the story of Winchester, Virginia and its transition from a rural, apple-farming community to a tourist attraction. Homeplace, Lingan wrote in an autobiographical statement found on his home page, the John Lingan Website, also “tells the story of Joltin’ Jim McCoy, a country music impresario from West Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.” McCoy was the person who gave country music legend Patsy Cline, a Winchester native, her first break in the business at his local nightclub, the Troubador. Cline died in a plane crash in 1963; McCoy survived her by more than half a century (he died in 2016), but Cline’s fame largely passed him by.
“By the time Lingan met him,” stated a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “he owned a local nightclub where he hosted karaoke and held a summer barbecue featuring smoked meat, a potluck smorgasbord, and a roster of hopeful local performers.” Lingan reports that he had to take up a collection in order to pay his wife’s and his own medical expenses. “Lingan’s charming book,” concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “tells of a mountain town’s adapting to change in fast-moving times.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2018, review of Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-tonk.
Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2018, review of Homeplace, p. 49.
ONLINE
John Lingan Website, https://www.johnlingan.com (May 25, 2018), author profile.
Writer’s Center, https://www.writer.org/ (May 25, 2018), author profile.
John Lingan has written for the Oxford American, Atlantic, BuzzFeed, the Baffler, Slate, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other places. He lives in Maryland.
John Lingan has written for The Oxford American, BuzzFeed, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Baffler, and many other magazines and websites. His first book, a narrative nonfiction account of the last honky-tonk in the Virginias, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Summer 2018. He lives in Rockville.
Teaching Style: John believes in the motto "read more than you write," so each week of his workshop will include an assigned reading and a few optional suggested ones. John also believes that writers can learn a lot from genres other than their own, so his classes will encourage writers to find inspiration outside their usual reading routines.
I'm a writer from Maryland.
I have written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, Pacific Standard, Hazlitt, and many other places. Often about music, but not always.
My first book, Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk, will be published in July 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It tells the story of Joltin' Jim McCoy, a country music impresario from West Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and the relationship between his work and his community, which included a pre-fame Patsy Cline.
I am a proud board member of the Washington, D.C. arts nonprofit Day Eight. I also teach classes at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD.
For invitations to your book club or class, or to schedule a personalized workshop to discuss your book proposal or manuscript, email me.
For media inquiries about Homeplace, email Taryn Roeder.
My agent is David Patterson at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.
I'm also on Twitter.
Author photo by the Shenandoah's own Pat Jarrett.
Lingan, John: HOMEPLACE
Kirkus Reviews. (May 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lingan, John HOMEPLACE Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 7, 17 ISBN: 978-0-544-93253-1
The struggles of a town in transition reveal ongoing changes in American life.
Making his literary debut, journalist Lingan creates a tender, elegiac portrait of Winchester, Virginia, the Shenandoah town where Patsy Cline made her debut and where honky-tonk--a rueful brand of country music--rang out in working-class dance halls, bars, and clubs. Honky-tonk, writes the author, "is the genre of heartaches, setbacks, and lonely, regret-filled nights. Honky-tonk country is the sound of rural-rooted people taking their first difficult, stumbling steps toward the city, and it is not often the music of triumph." Jim McCoy, the singer/songwriter who first put Cline on the air and who played guitar for many of her performances, is one of several residents Lingan profiles as he reveals "the never-ending American fight between commerce and culture" experienced by Winchester as it aspired to achieve "tourist-trap respectability" after its demise as the flourishing apple-growing center of the country. McCoy, who had been a popular entertainer, never attained Cline's success. By the time Lingan met him, he owned a local nightclub where he hosted karaoke and held a summer barbecue featuring smoked meat, a potluck smorgasbord, and a roster of hopeful local performers. Cline's former home, on the other hand, was turned into a museum, and the town celebrates her in an annual festival. "Patsy," writes the author, "is the patron saint of people who feel kicked to the curb." Those people still live in Winchester; those in the lowest economic strata are barely subsisting, with rising real estate prices, health care costs, and intrusive gentrification posing often insurmountable challenges. At McCoy's summer barbecue, a donation basket collects neighbors' contributions for his and his wife's medical bills. At the same time, hefty funding has turned Old Town Winchester into a walking mall, with espresso bars and sleek restaurants. Lingan resists romanticizing Winchester's rural past; yet, he admits, modernization, change, and loss "is the most American song of all."
An empathetic look at a community forging its future as it keeps a tenuous hold on its past.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lingan, John: HOMEPLACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A538293865/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4c686e4e. Accessed 15 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A538293865
Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk
Publishers Weekly. 265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p49+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk
John Lingan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27
(272p) ISBN 978-0-544-93253-1
Journalist Lingan's engrossing and fast-paced book tells a mesmerizing tale of the characters that put Winchester, Va., on the map. As in many small cities, the residents of Winchester are torn between preserving tradition and encouraging industry and jobs. Freelance writer Lingan was first drawn to Winchester in 2013 to explore country singer Patsy Cline's hometown, just two hours from Washington, D.C. Once there, he learned about Jim McCoy, a DJ who in 1948 gave Cline a chance to sing on a local radio station when she was 16 years old. Within a decade, McCoy started Winchester Records and opened a country music nightclub called the Troubador, which he operated until his death in 2016. Cline died in a plane crash in 1963, and since then the Troubadour has drawn tourists searching not only for stories about Cline but also looking for an authentic small-town experience. Lingan introduces readers to the town's notable historical figures, such as politician Harry Flood Byrd, who in the early 20th century helped expand the town's apple farming industry, and contemporary writer Joe Bagean (Deer Hunting with Jesus) who railed against the first Walmart that opened there. Lingan's charming book tells of a mountain town's adapting to change in fast-moving times. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk." Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852283/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a7d597e8. Accessed 15 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852283