Her story of being a laborer and truck driver for her family’s construction company has been published in Appalachian Heritage magazine. “I was down in the trenches doing hard manual labor. I learned to appreciate what the men did and the skills and talents they have. I went home with blisters on my hands. It was life changing,” she says.

Burriss garnered an appreciation for people who would never consider themselves heroes or heroines but are indeed. It was one of her own heroines, English professor and poet Rita Sizemore Riddle, who first brought her to the Radford campus as a Graduate Teaching Fellow. Burriss considers Grace Edwards, director of RU’s Appalachian Studies program, to be a mentor and role model. “She and Rita are pioneers,” she says. Riddle, now retired, is one of the most loved and respected English teachers in RU history. She is a published poet and outspoken advocate for fairness to all populations. Edwards works tirelessly to promote awareness of Appalachia’s culture and keep the spirit of its people alive through both the written and oral word.

Burriss is doing her part to keep the spirit and stories alive. For a book she is calling Women of Change, Women of Courage: Appalachian Activists, to be published by the University of Tennessee Press, she has begun criss-crossing rural mountains and valleys to gather oral histories — “herstories,” she calls them — from women she considers to be instruments of change. Her project will include women who were or are activists in a traditional sense, such as Bessie Smith Gayheart, who during the 1960s in her native Knott County, Kentucky, stopped strip mining bulldozers by placing her body in front of them. She also includes poets, writers and teachers. Riddle and Edwards were among the first women Burriss interviewed, and she spent time this past summer with Cherokee writer Marilou Awiakta.

After interviewing poet Diane Gilliam Fisher, Burriss received a note from Fisher including these lines: “I’d never thought of myself as an activist — it’s kind of amazing, isn’t it, the power of naming? That word makes me feel taller and stronger and all the more determined to try to give useful work to the world. I’m flexing my muscles!”

Burriss responds: “Diane is a poet, one who has written of the coal mine wars in West Virginia and Kentucky during union formation at the turn of the 20th century in her collection Kettle Bottom. In her work, she gives voice to the miners and their families, allowing them to speak out against the injustices committed against them by their own local, state and federal governments. ... In my mind, writing is one of the most powerful and effective forms of activism. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”

In November Burriss received a phone call from Dykeman Stokely, son of Wilma Dykeman, a critically acclaimed writer who was born in 1920 and has lived her whole life near the French Broad River in the North Carolina and Tennessee mountains. Stokely and his brother have agreed to work with Burriss on writing a biography of Dykeman, whose articles, story collections and novels tell about life in those mountains along the river.

Burriss says she is first a scholar but that she has a definite interest in creative nonfiction. “I have a three-year-old and a nine-year-old, so my creativity is two fold,” she says.

Her creativity is a concrete presence in RU’s Learning Assistance and Resource Center, which Burriss has directed since its inception in 2004. “I have taken much joy in creating a service that could make a difference on a large scale,” she says. The center offers extensive tutoring services and helps students improve their study skills.

Burriss also teaches American and British literature and poetry. She takes pleasure in introducing poetry to students who, at times, are resistant. “It is a joy to persuade students and help them see that poetry can be meaningful to their individual lives,” Burriss says.