John Fox, Jr.
Harriet Holman, in her article “John Fox, Jr. Appraisal and Self-Appraisal,” wrote that once Kentucky’s local color writer John Fox, Jr. became an established author, magazine editors bought everything he […]
Elizabeth Hardwick
The Lexington Herald’s school notes page of Sept. 29, 1929 reported that the Live Wire Club of Miss Skinner’s homeroom at Lexington Junior High School had decided to create a class […]
Helen Thomas
Helen Amelia Thomas was a famous White House correspondent and a trailblazer for women in Washington journalism. Born in Winchester, Kentucky, she was one of nine children of Lebanese immigrants. Her father was a grocer, and he […]
Ed McClanahan
When Ed McClanahan’s novel The Natural Man was published in 1983, Wendell Berry said, “Others have observed the natural man in the American condition before, but nobody has done it with such […]
Guy Davenport
Guy Davenport claimed that writing fiction was just a hobby, yet he published eight collections of short stories, won a third prize in the O. Henry Awards (1974), and was […]
Sue Grafton
Upon Sue Grafton’s death in 2017, the online site Literary Hub commented on the legacy of her 40-year career writing mysteries: “. . . the familiar sight of one of Grafton’s alphabet novels has […]
Wendell Berry
Wendell Erdman Berry is Kentucky’s most prolific and well-known living writer. In dozens of books, he has mastered three genres: fiction (both novels and short stories), poetry, and essays. He […]
Jane Gentry
When professor, poet, and scholar Jane Gentry passed away, Jeff Clymer, chair of the Department of English at the University of Kentucky, said, “Jane wrote with insight and grace of […]
Alice Dunnigan
In the editor’s note to Alone Atop the Hill: The Autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, Carol M. Booker wrote, “It wasn’t the poverty of a washerwoman’s life in rural Kentucky that drove young Alice Allison relentlessly to […]
Jesse Stuart
Jesse Hilton Stuart was an accomplished poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist by the time he was in his 40s. He received the 1934 Jeannette Sewal Davis poetry prize […]
