Troublesome Rising with Melisa Helton, Pauletta Hansel, Julia Watts, George Ella Lyon and Frank X Walker
Presented by The Kentucky Book Festival and Kentucky Humanities, this program is part of the main festival on November 2.
Melissa Helton
Troublesome Rising
Previously a tenured associate professor of English at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, Melissa Helton, serves as the literary arts director for the Hindman Settlement School. In Troublesome Rising, a visceral and powerful anthology, well-known and emerging Appalachian writers create not only a historical document and an in-depth investigation of the late July 2022 catastrophic flash flood in eastern Kentucky, but also a celebration of Appalachian strength, determination, and resilience.
Pauletta Hansel
Will There Be Singing?
Born and raised in southeastern Kentucky, Pauletta Hansel is a poet, memoirist, and teacher, who is a core member of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, and has served as Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, as well as past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary journal of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Will There Also Be Singing?, her tenth collection, contains poems of witness and protest exploring personal culpability in current social injustices and divisions while examining the complicated grief about a land she loves and for whose future she fears.
Julia Ellen Watts
Lovesick Blossoms
Author of fourteen novels for both young adults and adults, Julia Ellen Watts’s books have won a Lambda Literary Award, a Golden Crown Literary Award, and Honorable Mention for Best YA Novel of the Year in the Foreword INDIES awards. Set in a small Kentucky college town in 1953, Lovesick Blossoms is a compelling and emotional tale of passion, power, fulfillment -and consequences- of not playing by the rules in Appalachia.
George Ella Lyon
Time to Fly
Former Kentucky Poet Laureate George Ella Lyon is an award-winning poet and author with more than 35 books for young readers and numerous books for adults. In Time to Fly, a sweet and encouraging picture book, Baby Bird learns to overcome his fear of leaving the nest.
Frank X Walker
Load In Nine Times: Poems
The first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate and co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, Frank X Walker, multidisciplinary artist and author of thirteen collections of poetry and a children’s book, serves as Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. In this stirring new collection of historical poetry, Load In Nine Times, he braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops–including his own ancestors–with family members, as well as slaveowners and prominent historical figures–including Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and Margaret Garner–into a wide-ranging series of persona poems imbued with atmospheric imagery and brimming with indomitable spirit.