SUPERPOWERS: The ability to be in a state of awe
President/Editor-in-Chief, Mountain State Press and Writing Instructor, Marshall University
Cat Pleska grew up loving books thanks to her parents, whom she describes as voracious readers. But it wasn’t until she attended a parade in Marlinton and saw Pearl Buck, a West Virginia native and a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, sitting in the bleachers that she began to see an author’s life as one that could belong to people just like her. “I think subconsciously I thought, ‘OK, authors are real,’” she says. “‘They’re real people.’”
Now the president and chief editor of the nonprofit book publishing organization Mountain State Press and a full-time instructor in the English department at Marshall University, Pleska has written two books, edited countless others, written and recorded essays for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, reviewed books, and done just about everything else related to books that you can think of.
As a seventh-generation West Virginian, Pleska has a passion for telling stories from her communities. “I’m always fascinated to be able to talk with people and learn about them, and no more so than right here in my own state,” she says. She worked on I’m Afraid of that Water: A Collaborative Ethnography of a West Virginia Water Crisis, an account of the 2014 chemical spill into the Elk River, and she’s currently working on a project about folks who worked at the Corbin garment factory in Huntington, a place where she herself actually worked for a time as a machine operator.
After a long and varied career, Pleska says she’s right where she wants to be: telling the stories of Appalachians. “When I was 16, I wrote a letter to a friend, and I told her ‘When I grow up, I want to travel and I want to write,’” she says. “And you know, I’ve done both.”
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Since 2014 WV Living magazine has been honoring West Virginia Wonder Women, amazing women who are raising the bar in their communities, serving as beacons of light in their industries, and forcing change for the greater good. WV Living is proud to celebrate these Appalachian mothers, millennials, and mavens proving that in a time full of uncertainty, divisiveness, and hate, love for one another is all we really need. No need for bulletproof bracelets or a golden lasso of truth—these women are creating a better West Virginia with their can-do attitudes and Mountain State spirit.
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