Photograph by Tim Opelt.
Amanda Held Opelt is a writer, speaker, and songwriter from Southern Appalachia. She is the author of A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing, Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life, and Provisions: Finding Home Through the Food Folklore of the Appalachian Table. She lives in Boone, North Carolina with her husband and two small children. Visit her website here.