Shelf-Care is Self-Care: Writers on Mental Health with Tom C. Hunley, Anya Liftig, Rainesford Stauffer, Kelly E. Hill and Lynnell Edwards
Presented by The Kentucky Book Festival and Kentucky Humanities, this program is part of the main festival on November 2.
Tom C. Hunley
The Loneliest Whale in the World
A professor of English and Creative Writing at Western Kentucky University since 2003, Tom C. Hunley has published eight full-length poetry collections, eight chapbooks, and two textbooks, as well as written and co-directed You’re Not Alone, a short film produced by Forerunner TV. The poems in his latest collection, The Loneliest Whale in the World, have been called “prayers [and] a way to remind us that we are not alone, that there is a world inside this world, and it is beautiful.”
Anya Liftig
Holler Rat: A Memoir
Anya Liftig is a writer and performance artist whose essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and whose artworks have been exhibited at TATE Modern, MOMA, Queens Museum, Movement Research, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, Performance Space London, and many other venues around the world. In Holler Rat, Anya skillfully interweaves family lore from her childhood with descriptions of her performance art pieces and scenes of the year-long period in which her life fell apart, then plumbs the cathartic self-reckoning that followed.
Rainesford Stauffer
All the Gold Stars
Rainesford Stauffer, a Kentucky freelance writer and reporter, has contributed reports and essays to TIME Magazine, The Guardian, Esquire, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, and other publications. Her latest book, All the Gold Stars, is an examination, dismantling, and reconstruction of ambition, where burnout is the symptom of our holiest sin: the lonely way we strive.
Kelly E. Hill
A Home for Friendless Women
Kelly Hill has a PhD from the University of Louisville and an MFA in fiction from Spalding University. Set in Victorian-era Louisville, A Home for Friendless Women follows the Home’s benevolent benefactors and several of the fallen women who live there through their daily religious lessons and hard work while grappling with a terrible secret that has the power to unravel the Home entirely.
Lynnell M Edwards
The Bearable Slant of Light
Lynnell Edwards serves as Associate Programs Director and on the poetry faculty for the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. Her sixth poetry collection, The Bearable Slant of Light, documents the burden and beauty of mental illness in one family and across this history of writers and artists.