Emilee Hackney on Appalachia, Faith, and What the Church Doesn’t See

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What would we learn if we listened to the people who have left our churches? ⁠Watch this conversation on YouTube Emilee Hackney had never written a book before. She doesn’t have a substack or a social media following, nor does she write op-eds for the New York Times or The Atlantic. But her debut memoir, All That’s Unseen, has become a New York Times bestseller, was named a finalist for the 2026 Southern Book Prize, and had feature reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and more. The topic? Appalachia, faith, poverty, and her journey from Virginia coal country to Harvard. Remarkably–despite having left the Christian faith as an…