Shelby Lee Adams
Michael P. Branch
Bill Bryson
Clyde Robert Bulla
Jo Carson
Rebecca Caudill
Fred Chappell
Emmett Clifford
Sharon Creech
Jack Dann
Cecil D. Eby, Jr.
Wilson Gage
Michael Garrett
Doris Gove
Michelle Y. Green
Barbara G. Hallowell
Marc Harshman
William Hoffman
Gloria Houston
Ron Lewis
George Ella Lyon
Ian Marshall
Sharyn McCrumb
J. Tracy Power
Chris Offutt
Theda Perdue
Daniel J. Philippon
Thomas Pynchon
John H. Ritter
Constance Rourke
Cynthia Rylant
Karin A. Shapiro
James N. Sites
Richard M. Smith
James Still
David Hunter Strother
Jerry Thomas
Steven E. Woodworth
Shelby Lee Adams (b. 1950) was born in Hazard, Kentucky, to parents who had grown in adjoining farms fifteen miles from Whitesburg in Letcher County, Kentucky. The family lived in various locations, including New York City and Miami, and Shelby Lee Adams remembers going to a different school for at least part of each year until he entered high school. Yet part of most years his parents spent back home at the 400 acre farm of grandfather Banks, a former high school teacher, and the farm of the Adams grandparents. Here Shelby Lee Adams attended Hotspot Elementary. While he was at Whitesburg High from 1964-1968, he met various luminaries, including Robert Kennedy and Charles Kuralt drawn by the "re-discovery" of Appalachia. After attending colleges in Kentucky for two years, Shelby Lee Adams worked for the summer at Northampton State Mental Institute in Massachusetts, deepening his interest in mental illness and photography. Afterwards he attended the Cleveland (Ohio) Institute of Art. He currently lives in Massachusetts but often summers at the homeplace in Letcher County. His first book was Appalachian Portraits (1993)
Michael P. Branch received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and now teaches literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Bill Bryson (b. 1951), is an Iowa native who has been living in England the last twenty years.
Clyde Robert Bulla grew up on a farm in Missouri. He is a prolific writer of children's books, many of which have won prestigious awards.
Jo Carson was born in Johnson City, Tennessee, and has lived there most of her life.
Rebecca Caudill is one of the true pioneers in Appalachian children's literature. She was born in the Kingdom Come community of Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1899. At the age of four she moved to Sumner County, Tennessee, where she was raised. Although she lived most of her adult life in Urbana, Illinois, she stayed in close touch with the mountain region especially through the Pine Mountain Settlement School located not far from her birthplace. She published 20 children's books, and a trade book, My Appalachia, before her death in 1985. Her children's books won many awards. For example, her youth novel, Tree of Freedom, was a Newbery Honor Book in 1949.
Fred Chappell (b. 1936) grew up in Canton, North Carolina. Chappell has taught at U.N.C.-Greensboro throughout his career, and is clearly one of the most distinguished literary artists ever to come out of the Appalachian South. He is the author of twenty-three books, twelve poetry collections, eight novels two story collections and a book of literary criticism.
Emmett Clifford (b. 1937) is a resident of Middle Tennessee.
Sharon Creech (b. 1945) was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and now teaches literature in Surrey, England.
Jack Dann lives in New York and Australia. He is the author of The Memory Cathedral, an international best-seller, and The Man Who Melted.
Cecil D. Eby, Jr. is a retired English professor who taught primarily at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has published extensivesly especially on the literature of World Wars I and II.
Wilson Gage was the pen name of the late Mary Q. Steele. Not only were both she and her husband--William O. Steele--outstanding authors of children's books, but both of her parents were authors as well! Her mother, Christine Govan was one of the leading Southern writers of children's books of her day. Her father, Gilbert Govan was an historian and the author of The Chattanooga Country and other local history books. Mary Q. Steele was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1922, and lived there throughout most of her life. She died in 1992.
Michael Garrett (b. 1970) grew up in Cherokee, North Carolina, attended Guilford College, and received a masters in counseling and a Ph.D. in counselor education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is currently an assistant professor of counselor education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Doris Gove (b. 1944) grew up on a
Massachusetts farm, attended Barnard College and earned a Ph.D. in biology at the
University of Tennessee. She has lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, since 1979 and is the
author of several nature books for children, notably A Water Snake's Year (1991).
Michelle Y. Green grew up in Number 6 Holler at Jenkins,
Kentucky. She now lives in the Washington, D. C. area.
Barbara G. Hallowell (b. 1924)grew up in Pennsylvania and graduated from Swarthmore College there. For 23 years she lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where she taught classes in nature study at Blue Ridge Community College and wrote a column, "Nature Notes" for the Times-News. She co-authored Fern Finder, published in 1981 and wrote Cabin:A Mountain Adventure, published in 1986. She and her husband, Tom, have recently moved back to Pennsylvania and live in Kennett Square. They have three children and eleven grandchildren.
Marc Harshman, a native of Indiana, has lived for many years now in Marshall County, West Virginia, where he works as an elementary school teacher. For several years he has been one of the featured storytellers at West Virginia's Vandalia Gathering.
William Hoffman (b. 1925), a West Virginia native who taught most of his career at Hampden-Sydney College in Eastern Virginia, is widely viewed as one of the most talented and prolific regional writers of books set in the Virginias.
Dr. Gloria Houston grew up in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where her father ran the Sunny Brook Store. In addition to being a highly-acclaimed author of children's books she was Writer in Residence for the Education Department at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, where she taught children's literature for many years. More recently she has been writer in residence at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina.
Dr. Ron Lewis (b. 1940), Eberly Professor of History at West Virginia University, is one of the most hard-working and respected academicians devoted to regional topics today.
George Ella Lyon (b. 1949) is one of the most popular contemporary writers of Appalachian children's books. Her writing talent is matched by her abilities as a speaker. She excels in presentations to school groups and to prospective writers. Lyon was born and raised in Harlan County, Kentucky, and graduated from Kentucky's Centre College in the 1970s. She went on to receive a Masters from the University of Arkansas and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Indiana. Her dissertation was on Virginia Woolf. Lyon first published poetry and plays before she achieved success as a writer of children's books. Recently she has returned to writing for adults with a trade novel published in 1998. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, a composer and musician.
Ian Marshall (b. 1954) is Associate Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University-Altoona.
Sharyn McCrumb (b. 1948) is a native of Eastern North Carolina who now lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. She has written fourteen novels and a short story collection and has won the five major awards in mystery writing.
Chris Offutt grew up near Morehead, the son of Andrew J. Offutt, a science fiction author, and attended Morehead State and the University of Iowa's prestigious creative writing program. He has been writer-in residence at the Universities of New Mexico and Montana, and he currently lives near Morehead, Kentucky, with his wife and two sons. He teaches at Morehead State University.
Theda Perdue (b. 1949) is one of the leading scholars of Cherokee life. Her books include Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society (1979), The Cherokee (1989), Native Carolinians (1991) and The Cherokee Removal (1995). She began her teaching career at Western Carolina University, but has been at the University of Kentucky for several years now.
Daniel J. Philippon is finishing his dissertation at the University of Virginia.
J. Tracy Power is a historian with the South Carolina Department of Archives.
Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937) is one of the most celebrated contemporary American novelists. He grew up in New York.
John H. Ritter (b. 1951) is an Ohio native who now lives in San Diego
Constance Rourke (1885-1941) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and graduated from Vassar with a B.A. in 1907. After studying in Paris and London, she returned to Vassar as an instructor from 1910-1915. Illness forced her to resign and return to Grand Rapids. The seven books she published established her as a pre-eminent pioneer American cultural historian. The Roots of American Culture (1942) was published after her death.
Cynthia Rylant: In 1985 when Cynthia Rylant burst upon the field of children's literature with When I Was Young in the Mountains, a Caldecott Honor book, later chosen as a Reading Rainbow selection, very few children's picture books from our region were being published. Today, it is impossible to calculate her impact upon a field that includes many prominent writers who are natives of the mountain region, several of whom are quite young. This author was born Cynthia Smith in 1954 in Virginia, the daughter of a professional soldier. When Cynthia was four her parents separated. Because her mother decided to get training as a nurse, Cynthia was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Cool Ridge, West Virginia. Thus Cynthia was left without any day-to-day contact with either parent. Her grandfather, whose name she adopted as a pen name, was a coal miner. After her mother completed her education and got a job, Cynthia lived with her in Beaver, West Virginia from the time she was eight until she left for Morris Harvey College in Charleston, West Virginia. She received a Masters from Marshall University and a MLS from Kent State. Before her books made her self-supporting, she worked as a librarian in Cincinnati and Akron, Ohio. She has lived for many years now in the Pacific Northwest.
Karin A. Shapiro grew up in South Africa and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She received her PhD from Yale University in history and was a research fellow at her Alma Mater in South Africa from 1992 until 1997. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.
James N. Sites (b. 1924) lived in Pittsburgh until he was ten. Then he was sent to live on his grandparent's Ohio River farm near Burlington, Ohio. As a soldier in World War II he met his wife, a Norwegian who raised two sons with him and became a librarian. Sites worked mostly in Washington, D.C., and at retirement was the editor of The American Legion Magazine.
Richard M. Smith (b. 1914) has worked with the National Park Service and served as director of the Asheville Botanical Gardens.
James Still was born into the rural family of a veterinarian near Lafayette, Alabama in 1906. He attended Lincoln Memorial University and Vanderbilt graduate school with Jesse Stuart and Don West, graduating in 1929. After receiving a masters degree in Library Science at the University of Illinois, he came to Hindman Settlement School in 1931 and has been closely associated with that significant institution ever since, even during the twelve years he taught at Morehead State University and the many years he lived year-round in the cabin given to him by the dulcimer maker, Jethro Amburgey, on Dead Mare Branch of Wolfpen Creek about ten miles south of Hindman. A World War II veteran who served in North Africa and the Middle East, Still has visited twenty-four countries, for years traveling annually to visit Mayan sites in Southern Mexico. He is an accomplished poet, but best known as the author of the novel, River of Earth, published in 1940. The recipient of numerous awards, he is almost universally considered one of the leading contemporary Appalachian writers.
David Hunter Strother (1816-1888) was a life-long resident of what is now the Eastern West Virginia panhandle and, along with George Washington Harris of Knoxville, Tennessee, the only native Southern Appalachian writer to be published by national presses before the Civil War. He was an illustrator as well as a writer and mostly wrote travel and local color pieces using the pen-name, "Porte Crayon." In 1853 Harpers Magazine published his first story, about the Canaan Valley of present-day West Virginia. He covered John Brown's famous Harper's Ferry raid for Harpers and published two books after the War, Personal Recollections of the War and The Mountains.
Steven E. Woodworth is the author of Davis and Lee at War and Jefferson Davis and His Generals. He teaches history at Texas Christian University.