For our Sunday with Friends program, meet Carter Sickels, an acclaimed young Appalachian novelist. An associate professor at Eastern Kentucky University, he is the author of two novels. “An Evening Hour,” recently made into a feature film, is set in West Virginia coal-mining country and deals with a young man trying to find his place in the changing social economic landscape of the region. His newest book, “The Prettiest Star,” is about a young gay man returning to his Ohio hometown that had rejected him. In 2021 it won both the Southern Book Award and the Weatherford Prize for the Best Appalachian Book.