When Ella Hanshaw (1934-2020) first picked up the guitar as a twelve-year-old girl in Procious, West Virginia, she dreamed of being a country star. Taking to the instrument easily and learning by ear, she played and sang at home with her parents on the family farm, and was once offered a chance to play on the Midwestern Hayride, the country music radio show broadcast out of Cincinnati. Over the next 74 years of her life, though, as she wrote hundreds of songs, Ella’s artistic goals slowly ascended to a higher realm. By the late 1970s, her music had become inseparable from her faith. She considered her work to be authored by God, who would “give” her a song—both lyrics and melody—which she could write down and complete in fifteen minutes.

Though Ella is a unique talent with a singular voice, her songwriting and self-documentation can be understood as part of a tradition of non-professional women’s songwriting in Appalachia. Writing—such as recording family stories, inscribing birth and death dates in a Bible, maintaining correspondence, or annotating cookbook recipes—was historically one of the few admissible creative outlets for women in the mountain South. Though this practice ensured family knowledge was passed on to the next generation, women used this outlet in subversive ways to develop a voice and identity outside the limitations of prescribed gender roles. By writing gospel music, performing in church, and viewing her artistic talent and inspiration as gifts from God, Ella framed her work in such a way that she could still claim artistic agency while avoiding individual attention that may have been perceived as self-indulgent and socially unacceptable. Resistant to the potential consequences of a professional music career as a woman and mother, Ella chose to keep her music a non-professional pursuit, shared with family, community, and God, which allowed her to uphold the duty she felt to all three. 

Selected Press for Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book:

One of Songlines Magazine’s most anticipated releases of 2025.