Her first book, Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women's Literacies, was published by Ohio University Press in 2011 as part of their Series in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Appalachia. Her research interests include Appalachia, literacy, the South, foodways, and gendered issues within each of these categories. Her current project, Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People, explores depictions of Appalachian food in multiple outlets ranging from local color literature to missionary publications to contemporary fiction and poetry. University of Georgia Press will publish it as part of their Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place series. She has also published in The Southern Literary Journal, Appalachian Heritage, North Carolina Folklore Journal, and various essay collections.