The book release event is planned for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, in the Shawkey Dining Room of Marshall’s Memorial Student Center. It is free and open to all.
Dr. Rachael Peckham and Dr. Joel Peckham are professors of English at Marshall, where they have taught since 2009 and 2014, respectively. Joel is the author of several collections of poetry and nonfiction, most recently “Any Moonwalker Can Tell You: New and Selected Poems” (SFA); the book-length essay “Gone the Sun” (UnCollected Press); and the spoken word LP “Still Running: Words and Music” (EAT poems). With Robert Vivian, he also co-edited the anthology “Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose” (New Rivers).
Rachael is the author of “Alight: Flights of Prose” (UnCollected Press) and “Muck Fire: Prose Poems and Other Cultivations” (forthcoming from Compass Press).
“Flight 932: The 1970 Marshall Plane Crash and the Story of an American Town” (University Press of Kentucky 2026) is their first co-authored book.
Rachael Peckham said the question weighed heavily on her — why write a book on a subject that has already been widely explored. She had no plans to do so until she was awarded the John Deaver Drinko Distinguished Fellowship in 2017, and then Marshall President Jerry Gilbert casually suggested researching the crew of Southern Airways Flight 932.
“Before I knew it, I had 80 pages written about the crew and the details of the flight, and I’d barely touched the surface of the story,” Rachael said. “That’s when Joel helped me come around to the idea that this wasn’t an essay but a book project. I told him something to the effect of, ‘Well, if that’s the case, then you’ll have to team up with me to write it because I can’t do it alone.’
“Joel’s research interests include collective trauma and trauma theory, so it was a perfect marriage, so to speak; I would handle the accident and subsequent investigation, and he would take on its collective impact on the community. What resulted is a book that contributes to the existing body of research on the Marshall plane crash — one that doesn’t focus solely on the 1970 football program or even on the aviation side of it, as I had originally planned.
“It’s a book, in other words, that not only narrates what happened but that tries to understand it as an experience of collective trauma that continues to shape the life of this city, its people, and its university.”
Joel Peckham noted the care they took in handling the subject.
“From the outset I understood that this project placed a heavy burden of care on both of us because we came to this community as outsiders — though we have lived here over 20 years now and consider ourselves proud Huntingtonians,” Joel Peckham said. “We are not, however, outsiders to the experience of trauma and grief — Rachael having lost a grandfather and two uncles in a small plane crash in the 70s, and my case, having lost my first wife and oldest son in a car accident in 2004. Those experiences inform our approach to the book, which I hope is composed with extreme gentleness and care toward the story of this community in general and to those for whom the plane crash was a life-altering and personal tragedy.”
All are welcome to the Writers Series event, which is sponsored by the Drinko Academy and the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts.
The university is also planning an additional Q&A and book-signing event with the authors, planned for 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the John Marshall Room of the Memorial Student Center. This event coincides with a series of activities related to the Nov. 14 anniversary of the plane crash, including a special 20th anniversary screening of “We Are Marshall” Nov. 13 at the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center and the traditional annual ceremony Nov. 14 at the Memorial Fountain.