What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table?

My most recent book of poetry is The Parting Glass, published by Madville Press in November of 2022 which won the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. My first book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 Weatherford Award for Poetry and a second edition of the book was published by Madville Publishing in 2022. Both books will be available at the KY Book Festival.

Whom do you invite to stop by? Who will benefit from reading your book?

My books explore the dynamics of rootedness and the things that tie us to our land and our people, especially when we’re far from both. Both books touch on being an outsider as an Appalachian living in New York City and other places outside the region, and of the surprising familiarity of other cultures and their similar ties to their music, food, and land. Both books are Appalachian at their root and explore the things that ground and keep us when we’re far from home.

Could you please tell us something curious about you and/or your book?

I’ve worked for the Department of Defense for the last twenty-one years after living in NYC during the attacks on 9/11 and working as a first responder at Ground Zero in those first few days. It was an accidental career but one that I love.

Is this your first time participating in Kentucky Book Festival? If yes – what are you looking forward to the most? If you’ve participated before – what was your favorite experience at the Festival?

This is my first time at KY Book Festival and I’m most looking forward to seeing so many of my close friends and “found family” of writers in Kentucky who have been my colleagues, editors, and cheerleaders for almost thirty years. I can’t wait to get their latest books and relish all of that writerly time together.

Lisa Parker is a native Virginian, a poet, musician, and photographer. Her first book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 ASA Weatherford Award, her second book, The Parting Glass, won the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize.