KENTUCKY AUTHORS -- CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED

by George Brosi

William Wells Brown (1814-1884) was America's first Black novelist. He was born a slave near Lexington, but escaped to Ohio in 1834. The best known of his dozen works is Clotel: or, the President's Daughter: A narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), a fictional account of President Jefferson's mulatto offspring. It was published initially in England, but later was published in the United States with all references to President Jefferson deleted.

James Lane Allen (1849-1925) put Kentucky on the literary map. He achieved both public popularity and critical recognition and is the major literary interpreter of the lifestyle of the Old South as experienced in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. Born on an estate near Lexington, he was the salutatorian of the class of 1872 at Transylvania University. The Choir Invisible (1897), a novel which explores the theme of the conflict between honor and love in the life of a frontier Kentucky schoolmaster, is generally considered his best work.

Eliza Calvert Hall Obenchain (1856-1936) was an important Kentucky story-teller of the local color tradition. Obenchain was a Bowling Green native who lived most of her life there. Aunt Jane of Kentucky (1907), published under her maiden name, was an immensely popular collection of short stories told in the format of the recollections of an older lady.

Joseph Seamon Cotter (1861-1949) was a noteworthy early Black poet. Cotter's mother had been a servant at "My Old Kentucky Home" in Bardstown prior to his birth, and Cotter was born on a nearby Nelson County farm. As a baby, however, Cotter moved to Louisville, and there he gained an excellent education and became a leading black teacher and school administrator. Sequel to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and Other Poems (1939) contains a selection of his most widely anthologized poetry.

John Fox, Jr. (1862-1919) was one of the giants of American literature during the era of the romantic novel. A native of Bourbon County, he graduated from Harvard University cum laude in 1883 and then followed his family's mining interests into the coalfields at the edges of Kentucky, first to near Jellico, Tennessee, and then to Big Stone Gap, Virginia. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903) is a Civil War novel, and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908) is a love story, but both explore the contrast between the cavalier Bluegrass way of life and the more primitive mountain lifestyle. Both were among the most popular and critically acclaimed novels of their time. Fox was also the author of four books of short stories including Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories (1904).

Madison Cawein (1865-1914) was the leading American nature poet of his day. Cawein was a Louisville native, the son of German immigrants involved in the herb business. He worked in the Newmarket Poolroom for the six years after he graduated from Male High School. Kentucky Poems (1902) is representative of his work.

Olive Tilford Dargan (1869-1968), one of Kentucky's best writers, enjoyed a literary career which spanned 58 years from the year of publication of her first work until her last! She was born on a farm in Grayson County and lived in England and Nova Scotia as well as Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts. Most of her life, however, was spent in Western North Carolina where she produced her most important works including the poetry collection, Lute and Furrow (1922), a proletarian novel published under the pen-name, Fielding Burke, Call Home the Heart (1932), and a story collection, Innocent Bigamy and Other Stories (1962).

Lucy Furman (1870-1958) was a novelist whose writing has considerable charm even today. Born in Henderson and graduated from Sayre Institute in Lexington, she spent much of her life in Hindman as a house-mother at the Hindman Settlement School. After she left Hindman she became a crusader against cruelty to animals. The Lonesome Road (1927) is often cited as the strongest of her five novels.

Alice Hegan Rice (1870-1942) produced one of the best-selling novels ever written and set in Kentucky. Born in Shelbyville, she lived most of her life in Louisville. A socialite, she directed her philanthropic energies to a poor area of Louisville called "The Cabbage Patch," and her up-beat novel based upon a community leader there, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901), became a phenomenal success. Her subsequent Mr Opp (1909) was more favored by critics.

Irwin Cobb (1876-1944) was one of Kentucky's funniest and most prolific writers. A native of Paducah, his career included jobs with the most prestigious newspapers and magazines in New York City and a stint as a script-writer in Hollywood. Of his numerous literary works, two short story collections are perhaps most often cited. Back Home: Being a Narrative of Judge Priest and His People (1912) is representative of his more light-hearted work and The Escape of Mr. Trimm: His Plight and Other Plights (1913) shows his more serious side.

Charles Neville Buck (1879-1930) was a leading popular novelist of his time and a major interpreter of the Eastern Kentucky mountaineer. Born and raised in Midway, Buck graduated with a law degree from the University of Louisville. He spent considerable time in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, but moved to New York City to pursue his literary career. The Code of the Mountains (1915) is one of the best of his more than twenty popular novels mostly set in Eastern Kentucky. Typically action-packed, but not without serious themes, it portrays feuding mountaineers involved in the Spanish American War.

Effie Waller Smith (1879-1960) was a little-known lady who practiced the art of poetry in obscurity. Born in Pike County, the daughter of former slaves, she briefly attending Kentucky Normal School for Colored Persons in Frankfort. She returned to Pike County and married Charles Smith who died two years later in the line of duty as a deputy sheriff, shot by a moonshiner. Rhymes from the Cumberlands (1909) is representative of the poetry she collected into three books and saw published in major literary magazines. In 1918 she moved to Wisconsin where she remained throughout the rest of her life.

Elizabeth Maddox Roberts (1881-1941) was an important American writer whose work was at the leading edge of the transition from the romantic era in literature to the age of more realistic fiction. Born in Perryville, she moved as a young girl to Springfield where she lived most of her life. After working for over a decade as a school-teacher both in town and in the country, Roberts enrolled, at the age of thirty-six in 1917, in the University of Chicago where she came to know the leaders of the Chicago Literary Renaissance. The Time of Man (1926), a study of the mental strength of a tenant farmer's wife, and The Great Meadow (1930), a story of the Wilderness Road, are her best known novels. The Haunted Mirror (1932) is the first collection of her stories, and Song in the Meadow (1940) is a poetry collection.

Alfred Leland Crabb (1883-1980) was an historical novelist whose books continue to enjoy a remarkable following even today. He was born at Plum Springs, near Bowling Green, and was a school principal in Paducah and Louisville and a professor and dean at Western Kentucky University. However, he spent most of his life in Nashville, receiving both a bachelor's and a PhD from Peabody College there and returning to teach from 1927 until 1950. Most of his eleven popular historical novels are set in Tennessee, but Peace at Bowling Green (1955), set in Kentucky, was his most successful.

Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) never achieved wide popularity as an author, but she has always been deeply admired by literary critics, and her stature in American Literature has consistently increased with time. She was born at Merrymount Farm in Todd County, graduated from Bethany College in West Virginia in 1916, and was part of the literary scene in Paris, France, in both the twenties and thirties. Before her death in Mexico, she taught at several prestigious Universities around the United States, including Columbia and Emory. Of her many literary works, she is perhaps best known for the novel, Alex Maury, Sportsman (1934), based upon the life of her father and reflecting the agrarian values of the Old South and Green Centuries (1941) which shares its Kentucky setting. Many consider the short story her strongest genre. The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon appeared in 1981, the year she died.

Allen Tate (1899-1979) was better known as a literary critic than an author. He was one of the leaders of the "New Criticism" and was one of the twelve "Southern Agrarians" who contributed an essay to their manifesto, I'll Take My Stand. Tate was born in Winchester and raised in Ashland. He attended Vanderbilt University and taught at numerous universities including Princeton and Oxford and The University of the South. He was married to Caroline Gordon from 1924 until 1959. The Swimmers and Other Selected Poems (1970) is a poetry collection.

A. B. Guthrie (1901-1991) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his 1949 novel, The Way West, written while he was teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky. Born in Indiana, Guthrie was raised in Montana, but spent twenty-seven years in Lexington, Kentucky, working his way up from a job as a cub reporter to executive editor of the Lexington Leader and then, after being a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, serving as a creative writing teacher at the University of Kentucky. After his success as a writer was assured, Guthrie moved to Montana and completed a series of five novels set in the West.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) became easily Kentucky's most distinguished literary figure. He was the first Poet Laureate of the United States, and he remains the only person to have ever been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for both poetry and fiction. In fact, the Prize was awarded to his poetry twice, giving him a total of three Pulitzers! A native of Guthrie, Warren graduated from Vanderbilt University summa cum laude in 1925. He received his masters from Cal and a doctorate from Oxford which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. While at Vanderbilt he was, along with Allan Tate, active in both the "agrarian" and the "fugitive" literary groups. He taught at LSU and Minnesota before settling into a teaching career at Yale University. His first Pulitzer was awarded for All the King's Men (1946) a novel of political demagoguery in Louisiana. His poetry Pulitzers came for Promises (1957) and Now and Then: Poems, 1978-1979. However, Selected Poems, 1923-1985, contains selections from both of these and over a dozen other books of poetry thus giving a broader sense of Warren's entire poetic career. Warren's best-received novel set in Kentucky is World Enough and Time (1950). It uses "The Kentucky Tragedy," the 1925 murder of Kentucky Solicitor-General Sharp by the young lawyer who loved the girl Sharp seduced and assisted in her suicide the day before he was hanged, to plumb the depths of human responsibility. Band of Angels (1955) is the story of the search for identity of a plantation owner's daughter who learns after being away a college that her mother is a slave and that she must be sold to settle her father's estate. Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War (1961) is the story of a Bavarian Jew whose experiences as a European revolutionary lead him to come to the United States to help free the slaves. It, too, focuses on issues of freedom and identity.

James Still (1906- ) is considered by many to be the "Dean" of contemporary Kentucky writers. A consummate literary intellectual, Still was a friend of such national literary figures as Robert Frost and Marjorie Kinnon Rawlings as well as most of Kentucky's greats from Elizabeth Maddox Roberts on. A master of dialect, Still is a craftsman of words and phrases. He is best known for his novel, River of Earth (1940). His stories are collected in two volumes, Pattern of a Man (1976) and The Run for the Elbertas (1980). His poetry is collected in The Wolfpen Poems (1986). The son of an Alabama veterinarian, Still graduated from Lincoln Memorial University and received graduate degrees from Vanderbilt and the University of Illinois. In the early thirties Still came to the Hindman Settlement School, already made famous by literary figures like Lucy Furman. He has remained in Knott County ever since except for a few years when he taught at Morehead State.

Jesse Stuart (1906-1984) was one of the most popular promoters of Eastern Kentucky mountain life ever to make a living as a writer. Enormously prolific, his works now number well over 60 including poetry, stories and novels as well as biography and autobiography. It was a volume of over 700 sonnets, Man With a Bull-tongue Plow (1934) which launched his career. The novel, Taps for Private Tussie (1943), a hilarious story of war-time welfare fraud, was his best-seller. He is generally considered to be strongest, however, as short story writer, and the most representative selection is contained in A Jesse Stuart Reader (1963). Stuart was born in W-Hollow in Greenup County, the son of an illiterate tenant farmer. Like James Still, he graduated from Lincoln Memorial University in 1929 and also attended graduate school at Vanderbilt. In the early 1930s, Stuart returned home to teach and administer schools. His success as a writer allowed him to quit teaching and eventually purchase all the land his father ever farmed for shares.

John Patrick Googan (1906- ) won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1953 play, Teahouse for the August Moon, set in an American-occupied Pacific Island in the aftermath of the Second World War. Googan was born in Louisville, but soon abandoned by his parents. Thus he was reared in Louisville foster homes and boarding schools. In his teens he became a hobo, ending up as a radio announcer in San Francisco. He began writing for NBC as a result of his radio contacts and dropped his last name, using "John Patrick" as a pen-name throughout his career.

Harriette Arnow (1908-1986) was a superlative writer. Of Kentucky writers, only Robert Penn Warren has received more attention from academic literary critics, yet she may well be more widely read both within and outside Kentucky than Warren. Her best-known novel, The Dollmaker (1954), a story of mountain migrants in Detroit, received the National Book Award. In 1983 it was made into a television movie which won the Tony Award. Jane Fonda produced the movie and played the lead character, Gertie Nevels, clearly one of the strongest protagonists in Kentucky fiction. Arnow's other major work, Hunter's Horn (1949) depicts Kentucky farmers on their home ground. It develops characters so well that different readers identify with all three of the major characters, the husband/father, Nunnelly Ballew, the wife/mother, Milly, and the daughter, Suse. Arnow grew up in Wayne County and Burnside. After attending Berea's Foundation School and graduating from the University of Louisville, Arnow taught school and waitressed until moving to Michigan during World War II.

Janice Holt Giles (1909-1979) continues, even after her death, to be one of Kentucky's most popular novelists. Ironically, Giles did not come to Kentucky until after she had been married, raised a daughter, and divorced. Then, in 1945, she married a Kentucky G.I. who she met on a bus-trip to Texas. Giles' new husband took her to his native Adair County where she made the sometimes difficult transition to becoming a hill-country wife and gained personal perspective partly by writing about Kentucky hill ways and their historical background. The Enduring Hills (1950) tells the story of a mountain couple who leave a successful life in Louisville behind to return to their country home. Miss Willie (1951) is widely loved because it contrasts so directly with the legions of missionary novels which portray sympathetic outsiders who come in and save the depraved, or merely deprived--depending on the book--locals. In contrast, Giles' book tells the story of an outsider teacher who finds the strength to get her life together from the community people she comes to serve. Hannah Fowler (1956) tells of the life of a Kentucky pioneer woman. Run Me A River (1964) is a Civil War novel set on Kentucky's Green River. The Believers (1957) is a Shakertown novel which reveals how religious fanaticism can affect the loved ones of a "true believer."

Al Stewart (1914- ), a poet and editor, has inspired and encouraged generations of Kentucky writers. A native of Knott County, Stewart attended Hindman Settlement School where he was befriended by Lucy Furman. He graduated from Berea College and got a Master's from the University of Kentucky. As a teacher at Northern Kentucky University, Morehead State and Alice Lloyd College, Stewart actively encouraged writers by initiating writer's workshops, creating anthologies of Kentucky writing and founding Appalachian Heritage magazine. His best-known collection of poetry is The Untoward Hills (1962).

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) became, in his lifetime, America's best-known theologian and religious poet. His autobiography, Seven Story Mountain (1948), explained his decision to become a Catholic monk and sold over a million copies. Merton was a prolific writer, primarily of non-fiction, but also an accomplished poet. Merton was born in Paris, France, the son of a painter from New Zealand and an American student. In 1941, after receiving a Masters from Columbia, he joined the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemani in Nelson County, Kentucky, where he lived for the rest of his life. His Collected Poems were published in 1977.

Hollis Summers (1916-1987) was a university-based writer who contributed substantially in verse, story and novel forms. Summers was born in Eminence and, as the son of a Baptist minister, lived in Campbellsville, Louisville and Madisonville while he was growing up. He graduated from Georgetown College and received a Masters from Middlebury and a PhD from Iowa in 1949. He taught at Holmes High in Covington, at Georgetown College, at the University of Kentucky and at Ohio University. His novel, Brighten the Corner (1952) illuminates life centered around the Baptist Church. Of his poetry collections, Seven Occasions (1965) gained the most recognition, and his last story collection, Standing Room (1984) was his best received.

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916- ) is best known in literary circles as the woman who was the wife of the tempestuous poet, Robert Lowell, from 1949 until 1972 and secondarily as the literary critic who co-founded the New York Review of Books, authored Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature (1974), and sits on the Board of the National Book Award and the Jury of the Pulitzer Prize! However, she is also an accomplished writer of short stories and novels, including an autobiographical novel, Sleepless Nights (1979). Hardwick was born and raised in Lexington and received her Bachelor's and Master's from the University of Kentucky before moving to New York City.

Jane Mayhall (1921- ) is a novelist and story writer who has maintained close ties with Kentucky from a New York base. Born and raised in Louisville, Mayhall attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina and then married George Katz, a publisher and moved to New York in 1940. Mayhall is best known for her first novel, Cousin to Human (1960) which delightfully portrays a high school senior living in Louisville in the 1930s.

Harry Caudill (1922-1990) was best known as the author of the non-fiction classic, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1963), a plea for understanding of his native Eastern Kentucky. However, Caudill also produced two important Kentucky novels. Dark Hills to Westward (1969) is an historical novel which tells the story of the capture and escape of Jenny Wiley who was abducted by Indians in the pioneer days. The Senator from Slaughter County (1973) tells how a political boss controls an Eastern Kentucky County for his own benefit and to the detriment of the people. Caudill, a fifth generation Eastern Kentuckian, lived in Letcher County throughout his life except for service in World War II and attendance at the University of Kentucky and its law school and a later stint as a history teacher there.

James Robert Sherburne (1925- ) is an historical novelist who has set two of his books partially in Madison County. Born in Michigan, Sherburne moved to Kentucky with his family in 1941 and attended Berea College before graduating from U. K. in 1947. After working in advertising in Chicago for twenty years, he returned to Kentucky in 1968 and established residence in Midway where he pursued his career as a novelist. Hacey Miller (1971) is an historical novel which centers around the founding of Berea College. The Way to Fort Pillow (1972) is a sequel utilizing the same protagonist, Hacey Miller, and recounting his service in the Civil War as well as his involvement in Berea College. Stand Like Men (1973) is set in Harlan County during the mine wars. Sherburne now lives in Lawrenceville.

Billy C. Clark (1928- ) is one of Kentucky's best old-fashioned story-tellers. His extensive literary output was produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s after he returned from service in the Korean War and graduated from the University of Kentucky. It consists of fiction works which can be as easily considered youth books as trade books. Clark's writing tells stories from his youth as a poor boy growing up in and around Catlettsburg. Sourwood Tales (1968) is his story collection and Song of the River (1957) is, for adults, his most accessible novel. He taught for years at Somerset Community College where he founded Kentucky Writing. He now teaches in Virginia and is a founding editor of Virginia Writing.

Walter Tevis (1928-1984) was the most successful novelist ever to have close ties to Madison County. His father, a Madison County native, brought his family back to Kentucky from San Francisco when Walter Tevis was ten years old. He graduated from Model High School on the EKU campus in 1945 and entered U. K. after serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While a student at U.K., Tevis worked in a pool-room and published a story about pool written for A. B. Guthrie's writing class. After being awarded a Masters degree by U.K., Tevis wrote for the Kentucky Highway Department and taught school in Science Hill, Hawesville, Irvine and Carlisle and then at Northern Kentucky University. His first novel, The Hustler (1959), became a multiple academy-award-winning movie starring Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman. Tevis received an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1961, and from 1965 until 1978 he taught creative writing at Ohio University. His last years were spent in New York as a full-time writer. He is buried in Richmond.

Charles Bracelon Flood (1929- ) is Madison County's most distinguished contemporary author. He was born and raised in New York City and graduated from Harvard in 1951. In 1975 he married Richmond native, Kathy Burnham, and moved to Madison County where he has lived ever since. He has produced both fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps his best selling novel is More Lives Than One (1967). A Distant Drum (1957) is representative of his historical novels.

Leon V. Driskell (1932- ) is a well-respected contemporary teacher and writer working out of Louisville. A Georgia native, Driskell has taught creative writing at the University of Louisville for years. Passing Through (1983) is representative of his work. It presents nine stories with a narrative connection and is set in rural Kentucky.

Ed McClanahan (1932- ) is a zany writer whose style is totally unique. Often just plain gross in both his language and his concepts, McClanahan consistently redeems himself by his handling of important themes and the remarkable cadences of his language. The Natural Man (1983), his first novel, tells the story of fifteen-year-old Harry Eastep who is obsessed with losing his sexual innocence. The setting is reminiscent of Brookville and Maysville where the author lived as a young man. A graduate of Ohio University with a Masters from the University of Kentucky, McClanahan held a prestigious Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University and has taught at the University of Montana. After living for several years in Henry County, McClanahan now resides in Lexington.

Wendell Berry (1934- ) is Kentucky's most accomplished and versatile contemporary author. Berry has produced an impressive body of poetry, novels and fiction as well as essays. His lifestyle reflects the philosophy which permeates his writing, the idea that mankind can only be redeemed by living close to the land and to a community of neighbors who care about one another. He and his wife, Tanya, farm organically with horses on Kentucky River bottom land purchased from a great uncle. Berry grew up nearby in Henry County where his father was a lawyer and a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. After Wendell Berry graduated from the University of Kentucky he enjoyed stints on both coasts, notably as a Stegner Fellow and teacher at Stanford, but returned home to farm, write, and occasionally teach at his alma mater. The Memory of Old Jack (1974) is his most accessible novel and shares the same fictional setting and characters with all his novels and story collections, including The Wild Birds: Stories of the Port William Membership (1986). The Collected Poems: 1957-1982 is his most comprehensive collection of poetry.

James Baker Hall (1935- ) is the least known of four fellow students at the University of Kentucky who all went on to receive Stegner Fellowships at Stanford in the early 1960s. Like Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman, Hall is also a Kentucky native, having grown up in Lexington. He received his Masters from Stanford and taught writing and photography at MIT before returning to the University of Kentucky to teach. His second novel, Music for a Broken Piano (1983) is set in the hills of Massachusetts and depicts young people living in a 1960s commune. His first poetry collection is Getting It on Up to the Brag (1975).

Tom T. Hall (1936- ) is best known as a country singer and song writer, but he has also written two novels and a book of stories, The Acts of Life (1986). Hall is a native of Olive Hill, Kentucky. He has performed at the Smithsonian and the White House, and his best known song is the ballad, "Harper Valley PTA."

Jim Wayne Miller (1936- ) is a highly energetic promoter of Appalachian Literature who is widely admired as a poet and has recently worked in prose fiction. Born and raised in rural Western North Carolina, near Asheville, Miller graduated from Berea College and received a PhD from Vanderbilt University. He has taught throughout his career at Western Kentucky University. His third collection of poetry, The Mountains Have Come Closer (1980) includes "The Brier Sermon" a powerfully thought-provoking poem. Brier, His Book (1988) also includes poetry which ranges from the whimsical to the profound.

Gurney Norman (1937- ) is the fourth U.K. graduate of the late fifties who went on to Palo Alto, California, to receive a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Born in Grundy, Virginia, Norman was raised by various relatives in Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, notably a grandfather who ran a company store in a Perry County coalcamp. While he was attending the Stuart Robinson Settlement School in Letcher County, Norman's older brother, also a student there, was killed in a jeep wreck. Nevertheless, Norman graduated from U.K. and went on to California. There his first novel, Divine Right's Trip (1972), was published in the margins of the Last Whole Earth Catalog and then in both hardback and paperback editions. It depicted a California hippie who returned to Kentucky. Norman then returned to Kentucky himself first to work for the Hazard Herald newspaper and then to teach at U.K. A delightful collection of stories, Kinfolks (1977), depicts Eastern Kentucky good ole boys.

Sallie Bingham (1937- ), a descendent of the Louisville Courier Journal Binghams, is a philanthropist, feminist and writer who has encouraged a whole generation of female Kentucky writers. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Bingham lived in Boston and New York before returning to Louisville in 1977. Her second collection of stories, The Way It Is Now (1972) depicts women struggling with a variety of adverse circumstances.

Harry Brown (1940- ) is a teacher at Eastern Kentucky University who is widely respected as a poet. Brown was born in Baltimore and raised in Hillsboro, North Carolina. He graduated from Davidson College, got a Masters at Appalachian State, and, after a military stint, was awarded a PhD by Ohio University. In 1970 he came to E.K.U. to teach. He lives on a farm in nearby Paint Lick. His most recently published volume of poetry is Paint Lick Idyll and Other Poems (1989).

Bobbie Ann Mason (1940- ) is one of Kentucky's most prominent contemporary authors. She grew up in Mayfield, graduated from the University of Kentucky, and went to New York to become a writer. Before long, she enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Connecticut which she successfully completed, subsequently landing a job at Mansfield State College. Both her first short story collection, Shiloh and Other Stories (1982) and her first novel, In Country (1985), received an extravagant welcome from both readers and critics. As a result of their success she was able to return to Kentucky in the late 1980s and now lives near Lawrenceburg. Mason depicts working class people who are alienated from mass culture but see no way out.

Richard Taylor (1941- ) is a teacher and poet who is actively involved in books and literature. He is widely known as the proprietor of Poor Richard's, an impressive Frankfort bookstore which features both new and used books. Taylor teaches English at Kentucky State University and during recent summers has directed one of the two sites of the Governor's Scholars Program. Taylor's second collection of verse is Earth Bones (1979).

Joe Ashby Porter (1942- ) is a little-known writer with impeccable literary credentials. He was born and raised in Madisonville, the son of a coal miner. After graduating from Harvard University he received a Fulbright Fellowship which allowed him to study at Cambridge University in England. He received a Masters and PhD from Cal and embarked upon a teaching career which led him to Murray State University from 1978-1980. Since then he has been teaching creative writing at Duke. The Kentucky Stories (1983) demonstrate his command of the writing craft.

Jonathan Greene (1943- ) is a poet best known as a publisher. Greene was raised in New York City and graduated from Bard College. He came to Kentucky in 1967 as a book designer for the University Press of Kentucky. After a few years he established his own book publishing and distributing house, Gnomon Books. Greene lives on a Kentucky River farm north of Frankfort. Small Change for the Long Haul (1984) is representative of the dozen or so poetry chapbooks he has written.

Garry Barker (1943- ) is one of Madison County's most popular contemporary fiction writers. He was raised in rural Fleming and Eliott Counties by a large working-class family. A National Merit Scholar, Barker graduated from Berea College in 1965. Involved in crafts marketing throughout his professional life, Barker has worked for the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild and the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen. He is currently employed as Director of Crafts Marketing by Berea College. Mountain Passage and Other Stories (1986) is his most recent collection.

Marsha Norman (1947- ), Kentucky's foremost contemporary playwright, has already won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Born and raised in Louisville, Norman graduated from Agnes Scott College and received an MAT from the University of Louisville in 1971. She subsequently wrote for the Louisville Times, taught gifted classes and worked with disturbed kids at Kentucky Central State Hospital. Then she moved to New York City. In 1983 the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to her play, 'night Mother.

James B. Goode (1948- ) is an accomplished contemporary poet with deep roots in the Eastern Kentucky Mountains. The son of a coal miner, Goode was raised in Harlan County, Kentucky. After graduating from Southeast Community College in Cumberland and the University of Kentucky, Goode returned to Southeast as an English teacher. There he has been active in community and college affairs and produced several poetry chapbooks. Up From the Mines (1993) is his most recent product.

Gayl Jones (1949- ) is Kentucky's most highly regarded contemporary black fiction writer. Born and raised in Lexington, Jones graduated from Connecticut College and received a Masters in creative writing from Brown University. Subsequently she has taught English and Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. Her first novel, Corregidora (1975), portrays a black woman who sings at a Lexington bar as she attempts to understand the generations from which she came and her own role in life.

George Ella Lyon (1949- ) is both a practitioner and promoter of the literary arts who has had a positive impact especially upon younger Kentuckians. A native of Harlan, Lyon attended Centre College and received a PhD from Indiana University. Lyon is most prolific as a writer of children's picture books and is a very active speaker, especially for school programs. Her most recent poetry collection is Catalpa (1993).

Lisa Koger (1953- ) is a promising short story writer who has distinguished herself in portraying middle class characters. A native West Virginian, Koger met a Kentucky man at West Virginia University and married him. After their marriage, they lived in Alabama and Tennessee and then settled in his native Wayne County. In 1987 they got involved in a serious discussion of their future as they were driving to visit her relatives in West Virginia. The result was they turned around and headed the car to Iowa and submitted her application to the University of Iowa MFA program. She was accepted and while there finished the manuscript for Farlinburg Stories (1990). Now the couple is at home in Somerset running the family farm.

Fenton Johnson (1953- ) is an explicitly gay novelist who has attracted considerable attention in recent years. He was born and raised in the small town of New Haven, but has lived for several years in San Francisco. He has published several articles recently in the New York Times on coal mining, AIDS and other issues. The recipient of a Stegner Fellowship and an N.E.A. grant, Johnson has two novels in print, Crossing the River (1989) and Scissors, Paper, Rock (1993).

Barbara Kingsolver (1955- ) is a young writer who has recently amassed a large and enthusiastic body of readers and critics. Born in Annapolis, Maryland, Kingsolver was raised in Carlisle where her father was a physician. She graduated from DePauw University and got an M.S. in Animal Behavior from the University of Arizona in 1981. She has lived in Tucson ever since. The Bean Trees (1988) is a novel which portrays a woman who leaves Kentucky to seek a better life out west. Along the way she is given the care of Turtle, a young Indian girl. In the sequel, Pigs in Heaven (1993), Turtle gains attention for saving a trapped hiker and there ensues a legal battle between Indian rights activists who object to whites adopting Indians and the woman who raised her. Many of the stories in Homeland and Other Stories (1989) are set in Kentucky. One of the most compelling portrays an old coal camp woman who clings to her Indian heritage and is perplexed when a relative takes her to visit what has become a grossly overcommercialized Indian Reservation.

George C. Wolfe (1955- ) is one of the very most successful black playwrights and play directors based in New York City today. A Frankfort native, Wolfe is best known for his Broadway musical, "Jelly's Last Jam," which ran from 1991 to 1993. This success was the culmination of a career which saw Wolfe's plays produced practically every year since 1985, including most notably "The Colored Museum" (1986). Wolfe has won a series of awards, including an Obie Award in 1990 and Tony Award Nominations in 1992. His "Trying Times" was broadcast by PBS in 1989.

Michelle Boisseau (1955- ) is a prominent contemporary poet with an academic base at Morehead State University. A superior student with a Phi Beta Kappa key, Boisseau received both her B. A. and M. A. from Ohio University and her PhD from the University of Houston. She has been at Morehead State since 1987. Vanderbilt University Press published her No Private Life (1990).

Chris Offutt (1958- ) is a young writer who has deeply impressed literary critics in recent years. Offutt grew up in rural Rowan County where his parents were the only intellectuals around. He quit high school before graduating, and before he received his B. A. in Theater from Morehead State University he had often hitch-hiked around the country working odd jobs. He loves to recall incidents such as the time he actually rode through a restaurant dish-washing machine on a bet. In the mid-eighties in Boston he met Rita Lily who has gradually domesticated him as recounted in his memoir, The Same River Twice (1993). After they tried unsuccessfully to make it back in Rowan County, Offutt was accepted into the writing program at the University of Iowa which granted him an MFA in 1990. In the summer of 1994 Offutt moved from Iowa to Montana. His story collection, Kentucky Straight (1993) strikingly portrays lower class Kentuckians with impressively poetic language. As of the fall semester of 1998, Chris is back at Morehead State, where he's teaching writing.

Joe Coomer (1958- ) was born in Texas but came to Kentucky when his father, a Breathitt County native, found work in Lexington. Coomer graduated from Boyle County High School after his family moved to a farm near Danville. He attended the University of Kentucky and Southern Methodist University. Kentucky Love (1985), his second novel, is set on a farm near Decatur--reminiscent of Danville--and at U.K. It portrays a young man between his freshman and sophomore years in college who is trying to overcome a lost love affair.

Chris Holbrook (1961- ) is a native of Soft Shell in Knott County. He graduated from Knott County Central High School in 1979 and, in 1983, from the University of Kentucky, where he studied under Gurney Norman and James Baker Hall. After working at the Hillenmeyer Nursery in Lexington for about a year, Holbrook was accepted into the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program which granted him an M.F.A in 1986. He now teaches at Alice Lloyd College back home in Knott County and has seen several of his stories win prizes and be published in prestigious literary magazines.