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SCC announces all-star line-up of authors for 7th Annual Arnow Conference on April 3
Somerset Community College has announced that Kentucky authors Gurney Norman, Jane Gentry Vance and Gwyn Hyman Rubio will headline the Seventh Annual Arnow Conference on Appalachian Literature and Culture on Friday, April 3. The conference is named for Somerset author Harriette Simpson Arnow.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Nature, History, Culture: The Cumberlands of Harriette Arnow.”
Gurney Norman is the Creative Writing Director at the University of Kentucky. He is most noted for his novels Divine Right’s Trip and Kinfolks. Norman has produced three television documentaries on the Big Sandy Watershed, the Kentucky River Watershed and the Wilderness Road. Norman will be speaking at the conclusion of the conference. He will also take part in a panel discussion with Rob Weise, Sandra Ballard, and Randall Roorda on the theme of the conference.
“Gurney is the guiding spirit behind the SCC Arnow Conference,” said Lynn Crabtree, one of the organizers of the annual conference and an SCC professor.
Jane Gentry Vance is the Poet Laureate of Kentucky. She is a faculty member at the University of Kentucky and the author of several books of poetry including Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig, A Year in Kentucky: A Garland of Poems; and A Garden in Kentucky. She will be conducting the conference’s creative writing workshop on poetry.
Gwyn Hyman Rubio settled in Kentucky after graduating from Florida State University and doing a stint in the Peace Corps. Her novel, Icy Sparks, was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club in 2001. She is also the author of The Woodsman’s Daughter, which was published in 2005. She will lead the creative workshop session on fiction.
Joining Norman, Gentry, and Rubio at the conference will be Dr. Randall Roorda, the director of the UK writing program. Roorda has written extensively on the effects of nature and the wilderness on writing. He will conduct a creative writing workshop on “Environmental Writing.”
Keven McQueen teaches composition and literature at Eastern Kentucky University. He holds degrees from Berea and EKU. He is the author of five books: Cassius M. Clay: Freedom’s Champion, Offbeat Kentuckians, More Offbeat Kentuckians, Murder in Old Kentucky and Kentucky Book of the Dead. McQueen will be conducting a creative writing session on non-fiction.
Dr. Robert Weise is an associate professor of politics and economics at EKU. He specializes in the American South. He is the author of Grasping at Independence: Debt, Male Authority, and Mineral Rights in Appalachian Kentucky, 1850-1915. He is currently working on a book about “the political economy of poverty in the 20th Century rural south.”
Sandra Ballard has attended most of the SCC Arnow Conferences. She is the editor of Appalachian Journal and a professor at Appalachian State University. She is the editor of The Collected Short Stories of Harriette Arnow Simpson and Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia.
Tom Arnow, the son of Harriette Simpson Arnow, will return to this year’s event. Arnow has attended all of the previous six conferences. He will present “A Personal Look at Harriette Arnow” during the conference.
Joining this outstanding cast for a series of concurrent sessions will be Sylvia Davis, a writer and teacher from Madison County; Donna Summerlin, a faculty member at Lee University; Amanda Fickey, a graduate student at UK, Beth Cahaney, a faculty member at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College; Donna Eisenstate, a faculty member at the West Virginia Institute of Technology; and Laura Ruth Ward, a faculty member at the University of Louisville.
More information about the 7th Annual Arnow Conference can be found at the SCC website: www.somerset.kctcs.edu. Click on “Community Connections,” then click on “Harriette Simpson Arnow Conference or go directly to the conference brochure pdf."
For more information contact Lynn Crabtree at lynn.crabtree@kctcs.edu or by telephone at (606) 451-6765 or toll free at (877) 926-9722, ext. 16765.
To register please complete the conference registration form pdf. The conference fee is $40. Payments should be mailed to Somerset Community College, Attn: Lynn Crabtree, 808 Monticello St., Somerset, KY 42501.
Somerset Community College is a comprehensive two-year institution of higher education. SCC has campuses in Somerset and London, centers in Clinton, McCreary, Casey and Russell Counties. The website is www.somerset.kctcs.edu. Call for admission and registration information toll free at 1-877-629-9722.
KCTCS serves the Commonwealth through 16 community and technical college districts that form a seamless system of 62 campuses open or under construction. KCTCS colleges change lives by providing accessible and affordable education and training through academic and technical associate degrees; diploma and certificate programs in occupational fields; pre-baccalaureate education; adult, continuing and developmental education; customized training for business and industry; and distance learning. For more information, visit www.kctcs.edu.
