Natalie Sypolt
Natalie Sypolt is the author of The Sound of Holding Your Breath. Her writing has appeared in Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Superstition Review, Paste, Willow Springs Magazine, and The Kenyon Review Online. Sypolt is the winner of the Glimmer Train New Writers Contest, the Betty Gabehart Prize, the West Virginia Fiction Award, and the Still fiction contest. She is associate professor of English at Pierpont Community & Technical College and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association.
Featured Book
If Only The Rain Would Come
At the center of this gritty novel-in-stories is Hazel. A teacher at the local elementary school, she is intelligent, introspective, and lonely. When Hazel’s secret lover, Walker, dies and his identical twin, Sam, comes home from Afghanistan looking just like the dead, Hazel’s world is shaken. But her life appears the same to strangers—having exchanged one married twin in her bed for another. As Hazel’s relationship with Sam deepens, the community and their intertwined lives rise to the forefront. As the residents of Warm, West Virginia, cope with addiction, grief, poverty, and abandonment, Hazel must confront her own life choices and weigh their cost.
Meet Natalie Sypolt and get a copy of their book at the 2026 Kentucky Book Festival, Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.