Emma Copley Eisenberg’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, the Paris Review online, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Guernica, The New Republic, Slate, 100 Days in Appalachia, and others. Her first book of nonfiction, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia (Hachette Books 1/21/2020) has been named an Indie Next pick for February 2020, a most anticipated book from The Millions, Electric Literature, Vol.1. Brooklyn and others and an Apple Books and Oprah Magazine best book of January 2020. She is a fiction editor for AGNI and lives in Philadelphia, where she directs Blue Stoop, a hub for the literary arts.
In a lace-curtained living room of a cabin by the Greenbrier River, four men I had just met picked up a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass…