Between Two Covers: Stories of Place and Memory

June 17th, 2026

A new collaborative artist book rooted in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley offers readers a meditation on history, memory and the ties that bind people to places and one another.

On this month’s Between Two Covers on KVNO’s Arts Today, UNO Writers’ Workshop Associate Professor Teresa Carmody reviewed We Are All But Fumbling Creatures, a collection of stories by Chad B. Anderson paired with artwork by Jeffrey D. Gwynn. The book was published this spring as part of the Borough Press Collaborative Artist Book Series.

Anderson and Gwynn both grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and first met in a high school AP history class. According to Carmody, it is fitting that both became artists who explore “the weight of history on the present and the future.”

Though firmly rooted in one region, Carmody said the book ultimately becomes a portrait of the United States itself. The collection grapples with systemic violence and cruelty, while also making room for care, resistance and connection.

The stories unfold in a loose chronology. The opening story is set before the Civil War and follows ten formerly enslaved people fleeing north. Their escape becomes complicated when the white woman who once claimed ownership over them insists on joining their journey.

The final story shifts to a near future of failing infrastructure and data centers, where the Shenandoah Valley is enclosed by towering steel walls and people are once again trying to head north.

Between those bookends, Anderson traces generations of life in the valley. One story that deeply moved Carmody, “Boy Scout,” follows a Black gay boy from adolescence into middle age, exploring identity, longing and the emotional burdens people carry.

Gwynn’s artwork deepens those same themes. The full-page reproductions reshape fragments of the past and found objects into layered visual compositions that mirror the stories’ concerns with memory and transformation.

For Carmody, We Are All But Fumbling Creatures is ultimately a meditation on America and its possibilities. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary and during Pride Month, she said the collection serves as a reminder that people are connected by place, history and the stories they tell.

“We are all, indeed, fumbling creatures,” Carmody said, “bound together by the places and people, the stories that make us.”