Kentucky Humanities will open the Kentucky Book Festival with New Kentucky Poetry & Prose, featuring novelists Willie Davis and Robert Gipe and poets Maureen Morehead and Jeremy Paden. The event takes place on Monday, November 12 at 6:30 pm at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning in downtown Lexington.
Willie Davis is the winner of the Willesden Herald Prize (judged by Zadie Smith). His work has appeared in The Guardian, Salon, The Kenyon Review, Story South, and The Berkeley Fiction Review, among other places. His debut novel, Nightwolf, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Milo Byers, who is convinced that a vigilante tagger is his runaway brother, and that he must capture the mysterious figure and take him to his dementia-stricken mother to save her mind.
Robert Gipe’s fiction has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Still, Motif, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Gipe is the director of the Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College, a producer of Higher Ground, and faculty coordinator of the Crawdad student arts series. His newest novel, Weedeater, is a story of love and loss told by a pair of eastern Kentucky mountaineers: Gene, a lovelorn lawn man privy to the misadventures of a tragic family; and Dawn Jewell, a young mother at the center of that family, searching for what she’s lost – family, youth, community, and heart.
Poet, writer, and educator Maureen Morehead is a former Kentucky Poet Laureate and the author of four collections of poetry. Her newest collection, published by Larkspur Press and entitled The Red Gate, shares the poems inspired by three years of walking the same trail in Anchorage, Kentucky, intertwined with memory, imagination, observation, and introspection. The book features woodcuts by Joanne Price.
Jeremy Paden is an Affrilachian Poet and the author of three chapbooks. His poems and translations have appeared in Adirondack Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat, and Louisville Review to name a few. Paden is professor of Spanish at Transylvania University and on faculty at Spalding’s low-residency MFA. He is a recipient of the Al Smith Individual Artist Award. Paden’s new poetry collection, prison recipes, takes the reader into the lives of the prisoners of political oppression in Argentina and Chile, describing the means by which both bodies and souls are sustained in the face of brutality.
“At the heart of the Kentucky Book Festival is the desire to promote writers and poets in our own state,” says Bill Goodman, executive director of Kentucky Humanities. “It is most fitting that the festival begins with readings from these accomplished Kentucky authors.”
“The move to expand the Book Fair to a week-long Book Festival and to partner with institutions like the Carnegie Center is an exciting new direction that promises to bring greater attention to Kentucky’s vibrant community of contemporary writers,” adds Jeremy Paden. “For my part, it is an honor to read with Davis, Gipe, and Morehead, writers whose work I have admired for many years.”
New Kentucky Poetry & Prose is FREE and open to the public. No tickets or RSVP are necessary to attend. Books will be available for purchase from Joseph-Beth Booksellers, and authors will sign following the readings.
New Kentucky Poetry & Prose is one of many Kentucky Book Festival events taking place November 12 – 17. The Kentucky Book Festival would not be possible without our sponsors, donors, and community partners.
More information on the Festival, including a full list of sponsors, events, and authors can be found at the website or by calling (859) 257-5932.