Cicero M. Fain III
Cicero M. Fain III is the author of Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story, which was a Weatherford Award finalist and winner of the West Virginia Library Association’s Literary Merit Award. Sheena Harris Hayes is the author of Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman. Her article, ‘A Woman’s Work: The Story of Cornelia Bowen and Mt. Meigs, Alabama,’ won the Griot Golden Pen Award. Wilburn Hayden Jr. is the author of Appalachian Black People: Identity, Location and Racial Barriers and served as the first African American president of the Appalachian Studies Association. William H. Turner is coeditor of Blacks in Appalachia and author of The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns, which won a Weatherford Award and Kentucky Historical Society Governor’s Award.
Contributors
Wilburn Hayden Jr.
Co-editor
William H. Turner
Co-editor
Featured Book
Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity
Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity is the long-awaited successor to Blacks in Appalachia (1985), the first modern anthology to examine the socioeconomic, cultural, and political experiences of Black Appalachians. Covering topics such as migration, discrimination, the arts, and the links between memory and place, this book demonstrates that Appalachia’s Black residents maintain a significant role in shaping the region. It documents a renaissance of ideas, music, poetry, photography, and food and uses innovative scholarship, perspectives, and fields of inquiry to acknowledge the challenges and complexities of the Black experience in Appalachia, both historically and within a contemporary framework that addresses new realities.
Meet Cicero M. Fain III and get a copy of their book at the 2026 Kentucky Book Festival, Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.