When Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew retired from racing in 1978 to stand at stud at Spendthrift Farm, no one could be certain he would be a successful sire. But just four years later, his dark bay daughter Landaluce won the Hollywood Lassie Stakes by twenty-one lengths—a margin of victory that remains the largest ever […]
Jay McCoy
What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table? Visitors will find Mama Said, my debut collection of linked short stories published by West Virginia University Press, displayed proudly on my table–along with a few treats. Mama Said is set in Louisville, Kentucky amid the tail end of the crack epidemic […]
A determined Owl builds strength and confidence in this medieval picture book about the real mettle of a hero: wits, humor, and heart.
By conveying the despair—and serenity—found in the loneliness of the woods and tackling the frank reality of self-acceptance in the face of ugly truths, Kingfisher Blues offers a visceral encounter with the intertwined forces of nature, human struggle, and redemption.
In this landmark biography, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice […]
Kimmery Martin, former ER doctor and author of "Doctors and Friends," presents “An Insider’s Look at the Practice of Medicine: Writing a Pandemic Novel BEFORE a Pandemic” on the Main Stage. Join at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, or watch the livestream from here on Saturday, November 6. Thanks to our Main Stage Sponsor, the University of Kentucky!
What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table? Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse Whom do you invite to stop by? Who will benefit from reading your book? Lovers of stories about hidden histories as well as horses, particularly racehorses, may be interested in […]
Teaching kids history and science doesn’t need to be boring. Whether writing fact or fiction, each of these talented authors artfully merges themes and concepts from past and present history and science to make a lasting impact on young readers. Tune in to this lunchtime session to learn more about how they do it!
What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table? Eleanor Robson Belmont, a Theatrical Life The woman who named the great racehorse Man o’ War was a brilliant stage actress with Kentucky connections and an independent spirit. She moved in fast circles, defining her own life with a fierce intelligence […]
What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table? Creepy Kentucky is the follow-up to The Kentucky Book of the Dead, but with all-new material. It includes many documented stories about ghosts, strange deaths, body snatchers, people who predicted their own deaths, premature burials, and much more. Kentucky Book of the […]
Kentucky's Lost Bourbon Distilleries recounts a part of the rich history of the Commonwealth’s world-renowned bourbon industry and the hundreds of distilleries that closed because of Prohibition or decades afterwards with only old photographs left to tell this story of dedicated craftsmanship.
Kentucky’s first senator, John Brown, is almost unknown in the nation and in Kentucky. He was a son of colonial Virginia and a father of Kentucky statehood, but historians have often minimized his contribution, slurred him as a “Spanish conspirator,” or deliberately excluded him from the historiography. He was the only Kentuckian active in national […]