James Archambeault is widely viewed as Kentucky’s foremost contemporary nature photographer. His four spectacular coffee-table books and his calendars are widely known, and his work as also appeared in national publications including Architectural Digest, National Geographic, Time-Life Books, Smithsonian Guide to Natural America, as well as many others.
Wendell Berry was recently named one of Smithsonian’s 35 People Who Make a Difference. Berry and his wife, Tanya, farm organically with horses on the Kentucky River near where he was born and raised in Henry County. He is the author of more than forty books, including poetry, fiction and essays.
Theresa L. Burris has been published in several books and periodicals including An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature (Ohio University Press, 2005) Raised in Bristol, Tennessee, she now serves Radford University as the Director of the Learning Assistance and Resource Center and an English Professor.
Linda Caldwell is a retired public school librarian who lives on a farm near Paint Lick, Kentucky, which has been in her family for over one hundred years. Her work has appeared in many periodicals including Prairie Schooner.
Dexter Collet was raised in a coal camp in Harlan County and now lives in a non-electric cabin in nearby Leslie County. He is the author of Bibliography of Theses and Dissertation Pertaining to Southern Appalachian Literature: 1912-1991 (Appalachian Imprints, 1994).
Floyd D. Davis lives in Floyd County, Kentucky, where he was born and raised. Due to a disability, he is retired from working for regional health agencies and teaching sociology part-time at Big Sandy Community College.
Sidney Saylor Farr grew up on Stoney Fork of Straight Creek in Bell County, Kentucky, and served as editor of Appalachian Heritage from 1985-1999. She is the author of seven books, including More than Moonshine (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).
Nikky Finney is a long-time member of the Affrilachian Writers who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. The author of The World is Round (Innerlight, 2003), she is currently working on a novel and her fourth book of poetry.
Morris Grubbs teaches English at Lindsey Wilson College
in Columbia, Kentucky. He is the editor of Home and Beyond:
An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories (University Press
of Kentucky, 2001) and is currently editing Conversations
with Wendell Berry (forthcoming from the University Press
of Mississippi).
Holly Harold’s family roots lie near Salyersville, Kentucky, and she was raised in Portsmouth, Ohio, but she currently lives in the Los Angeles area where she is a writer for the Warner Brothers television series Smallville. Her first feature film script, “Last Night,” has been accepted at the Sundance Producers Workshop. This is the first work she has submitted to the print media.
Shawn Holliday grew up in Williamson, West Virginia, and now teaches at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky. He is the author of Thomas Wolfe and the Politics of Modernism (Peter Lang, 2001)
Silas House has always lived in Lily, Kentucky. First published
in Appalachian Heritage, he now has three novels in print:
Clay’s Quilt (2002), A Parchment of Leaves (2003),
and The Coal Tattoo (2004), all published by Algonquin Books
and paperbacked by Ballantine. He teaches at Lincoln Memorial
University and in the MFA program at Spalding University.
Jeanne Larson has lived in the Roanoke Valley since 1980
and currently directs the Creative Writing MFA program
at Hollins University. She held a National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship in Literary Translation in 1995, and
her work has appeared in such periodicals as the Sewanee
Review, Georgia Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review
as well as in about half a dozen books.
Katherine Ledford is a full-time mom and part-time English professor who still lives in Mitchell County, North Carolina, where she was raised. She is co-editor of Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes (University Press of Kentucky, 1999), and her work has been published in periodicals including Appalachian Journal, and Journal of Appalachian Studies.
George Ella Lyon is the author of over thirty books including twenty-two picture books for children notably Come A Tide (Orchard, 1990), a Reading Rainbow selection. Her other works include poetry collections, youth novels, a trade novel, and an autobiography. Lyon grew up in Harlan, Kentucky, and now lives in Lexington.
Jeff Daniel Marion’s eighth book, Ebbing &Flowing Springs, was named the Independent Publisher’s Book of the Year in Poetry in 2003 as well as the Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. A native of Rogersville, Tennessee, Marion is now retired from teaching at Carson-Newman College and lives in Knoxville.
Thorpe Moeckel was a trail and river guide for ten years in his native Georgia as well as in West Virginia and North Carolina. He completed an MFA at the University of Virginia in 2002 and served as Kenan Visiting Poet at UNC-Chapel Hill last year. He now lives on a farm near Buchanan, Virginia, and teaches creative writing at Hollins University. He is the author of Odd Botany (Silverfish Review Press, 2002).
Robert Morgan’s third novel, Gap Creek (Algonquin, 1999) became an Oprah Winfrey selection and catapulted him into national prominence. A native of western North Carolina, he teaches at Cornell University and is the author of thirteen poetry collections, five novels, three story collections and one book of essays.
Lynn Powell was born and raised in East Tennessee and did her undergraduate work at Carson-Newman College. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review and other publications as well as in two of her own collections, Old & New Testaments (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) and The Zones of Paradise (University of Akron Press, 2003). She currently teaches at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Anna Sale grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, received a history degree from Stanford University, and recently returned to Charleston. She presently works as a reporter for West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Tim Skeen was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, and raised there and in Lorain, Ohio. He taught at Big Sandy Community and Technical College in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, for eight years, but recently accepted a job teaching in the Creative Writing Program at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of Kentucky Swami (BkMk Press 2001).
Katherine Smith was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she graduated from the University of Tennessee. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia. She is the author of the poetry book, Argument by Design (Washington Writers, 2003). Some of her publications include Poetry, Shenandoah, and Southern Review. She currently teaches at Montgomery College in Maryland.
Barbara Wade is an English professor at Berea College, where she currently teaches an Appalachian Literature course. She’s the author of Frances Newman: Southern Satirist and Literary Rebel (The University of Alabama Press, 1998).
Jeff Wallace was raised in the village of Oak Hill in Southeastern Ohio. He is currently working on an MFA in fiction at Indiana University where Crystal Wilkinson is one of his teachers. This is his first published work.
Crystal Wilkinson teaches creative for the MFA Program at Indiana University. She is the author of two story collections from Toby Press, Blackberries, Blackberries (2000) and Water Street (2002). In 2003 Morehead State University awarded Wilkinson their Chaffin Award for her Outstanding Contribution to Regional Literature.
Charles Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1998 for Black Zodiac, which also garnered him the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. He won the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music/Selected Early Poems and a legion of other honors for his nineteen books of poetry. He was born at Pickwick Dam in West Tennessee, but grew up in Oak Ridge and Kingsport in East Tennessee. He has been the Sounder Family Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia since 1983.