The Mountain Heritage Literary Festival
June 10-12, 2011
2010 Staff
KEYNOTE ADDRESS. Gurney Norman is the beloved author of Kinfolks and Divine Rights Trip. Norman grew up in Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Stanford University, where he was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing. In 1979, he joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as an Associate Professor of English and he currently serves as Director of the English Department’s Creative Writing Program. In 1996 Norman's work as a fiction writer, filmmaker, and cultural advocate was honored at the Fifteenth Annual Emory and Henry College Literary Festival, which celebrates significant writers in the Appalachian region. In 2007 the Appalachian Studies Association awarded Norman the Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award, which recognizes exemplary contributions to Appalachia through involvement with and service to its people and communities. Norman serves as Senior Writer-in-Residence at Hindman Settlement School's annual Appalachian Writers Workshop. Norman presently serves as the Poet Laureate of Kentucky.
KEYNOTE MUSICIAN. Caroline Herring, a native of Canton, Mississippi, is one of the most exciting and acclaimed singer-songwriters of the moment and has been compared to Joan Baez and Bach. Herring took home best new artist honors at the 2002 Austin Music Awards during the South by Southwest music conference and has since played at such prestigious gigs as the Newport Folk Festival and New York City's Mercury Lounge. Her albums Wellspring, Twilight, and Lantana are considered some of the strongest of the last decade and in 2009 her album Golden Apples of the Sun established her as one of the best American singer-songwriters. Herring lives outside Atlanta.
FICTION MASTER CLASS. Ann Pancake grew up in West Virginia. Her first novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been was one of Kirkus Review's Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Award, and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award. Pancake's collection of short stories, Given Ground, won the 2000 Bakeless award, and she has also received a Whiting Award, an NEA Grant, and a Pushcart Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies like Glimmer Train, Poets and Writers, Narrative, and New Stories from the South. She earned her BA in English at West Virginia University and a PhD. in English Literature from the University of Washington. Currently, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
NONFICTION MASTER CLASS. Anne Shelby’s books for children include The Man Who Lived in a Hollow Tree, The Adventures of Molly Whuppie, which won a prestigious 2008 Aesop Award, and beloved picture books like Homeplace, We Keep a Store, What to Do About Pollution, and others. Her books have been chosen as American Bookseller Picks of the Lists, School Library Journal Best Books, and a Junior Library Guild Selection. Her work has been anthologized in such books as Bloodroot, Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region, Listen Here, and others. Also a respected poet, actress, activist and essayist, Shelby lives in Eastern Kentucky, where she was born and raised, and teaches at Eastern Kentucky University.
POETRY MASTER CLASS. Ron Houchin is a retired public school teacher who taught in the Appalachian region of southernmost Ohio for thirty years. Though raised on the remote banks of the Ohio River in Huntington, West Virginia, he has travelled throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Southwest Review, Appalachian Heritage, The New Orleans Review, and over two hundred other venues. He has been awarded an Ohio Arts Council Grant for teachers of the arts, a tutorial fellowship to teach in a Dublin writing workshop, a poetry prize from Indiana University, as well as a book of the year award from the Appalachian Writers' Association. His poems have been featured on Verse Daily. He has published four poetry collections: Among Wordless Things, Death and the River, Moveable Darkness, and Museum Crows.
SONGWRITING MASTER CLASS. Sue Massek. As a founding member of and banjo-player for the Reel World String Band, Sue Massek has been heavily influenced by her experiences at the Highlander Center, where she met and learned from activists like Rosa Parks and Pete Seeger. With the Reel World String Band, Sue has toured the USA, Canada, and Italy and just finished their sixth recording project, "Coast is Clear." Her solo work has taken her to Guatemala and Nicaragua, but more often she is in Kentucky schools teaching diversity, disguised as folk music and dance. Sue's love for nature is a driving force in her life and many of her songs reflect her passion for protecting our environment. Her songs have been featured in films and plays.
SPECIAL MUSICAL GUEST Kate Larken will provide the introductory music for the keynote address of Gurney Norman. Her music was featured in the film Maxine which was based on a short story by Norman. A Kentucky native, Larken is a musician, writer, actress, and publisher. She owns and operates Motes Books, which has published books by many prominent Appalachian authors. She presently lives in Louisville.
SPECIAL GUEST. Amy Greene is the nationally best-selling author of BLOODROOT and is a native of East Tennessee. She is a graduate of Vermont College and has just finished her second novel, LONG MAN. She lives in East Tennessee with her family.
SPECIAL GUEST. Bev May is the subject of the acclaimed film DEEP DOWN. May is a nurse practicioner, old-time fiddler, and activist who recently led her community in a fight that shut down a coal company's plans to mine along their road. A hero to many, May lives in Wilson's Creek, Kentucky.
SPECIAL GUEST. Linda Parsons Marion is the the author of Home Fires and Motherland. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Cornbread Nation 2, Negative Capability, Nimrod, Potomac Review, CALYX, Helicon Nine, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, among others. Marion is an editor at the University of Tennessee and lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion.
SPECIAL GUEST. Jeff Daniel Marion grew up in Rogersville, Tennessee and served as poet-in-residence and Director of the Appalachian Center at Carson-Newman College. His books include Letters Home, Ebbing and Flowing Springs, The Chinese Poet Awakens, and many others. His work has been widely anthologized. As poet, editor, printer, teacher, and lecturer, he has helped to create and support the literature of the region over the last three decades. He lives in Knoxville with his wife, Linda.
SPECIAL GUEST. Judy DiGregorio is a humor columnist for Anderson County Visions Magazine and author of two books published by Celtic Cat Publishing, LIFE AMONG THE LILLIPUTIANS and MEMORIES OF A LOOSE WOMAN (to be published in May 2010). Her work has appeared in the Chicken Soup books, Army-Navy Times, CC Motorcycle NewsMagazine, The Writer, ByLine Magazine, New Millennium Writings, and numerous anthologies. Judy also writes press releases for the Oak Ridge Playhouse where she frequently appears on stage. In her spare time she performs with a vocal group called "Varying Degrees." A storyteller and speaker, Judy has given more than sixty talks since her first book was published. Visit her website.
SPECIAL GUEST. Maurice Manning is one of the most acclaimed contemporary American poets. His books include THE COMMON MAN, BUCOLICS, LAWRENCE BOOTH'S BOOK OF VISIONS, and A COMPANION FOR OWLS. A winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, Manning teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Warren Wilson University and at Indiana University. A native of Danville, Kentucky, he lives in Bloomington, Indiana and Washington County, Kentucky.
DIRECTOR. Silas House is the author of four novels: Clay's Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2003), The Coal Tattoo (2004), Eli the Good (2009), two plays, The Hurting Part (2005) and Long Time Traveling (2009), and Something's Rising (2009), a creative nonfiction book about social protest co-authored with Jason Howard. In 2009 the Silas House Literary Seminar was given at Emory and Henry College. He lives in his native Eastern Kentucky and serves as writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University and on the fiction faculty of the Spalding University MFA. He is currently at work on his fifth novel Evona Darling.
DIRECTOR. Denton Loving is the 2007 recipient of the Gurney Norman Prize for Writing. His work has been published in Kudzu, Birmingham Arts Journal, Somnambulist Quarterly, Appalachian Journal, and Minnetonka Review, as well as in numerous anthologies including We All Live Downstreat: Writings About Mountaintop Removal . He serves as irector of prospect research at Lincoln Memorial University and lives in Speedwell, Tennessee.
University Advancement
Lincoln Memorial University
Cumberland Gap Parkway
P.O. Box 2005
Harrogate, TN 37752
Phone:
423.869.7072 or 800.325.0900, ext. 7072
