Gurney Norman | |
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| Born | 1937 (age 85–86) Grundy, Virginia, U.S. |
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| Alma mater | Stuart Robinson School University of Kentucky Stanford University |
Gurney Norman (born 1937) is an American writer documentarian, and professor.
Gurney Norman was born in Grundy, Virginia, in 1937. He grew up in the southern Appalachian Mountains and was raised alternately by his maternal grandparents in Southwest Virginia and his paternal grandparents in Eastern Kentucky in several towns, but primarily in the small community of Allais, near Hazard, in Perry County. [1] He attended Stuart Robinson School [2] in Letcher County, Kentucky, from 1946 to 1955. Norman attended the University of Kentucky from 1955 to 1959, graduating with a degree in journalism and English. [1] In 1960, he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University where he studied with literary critic Malcolm Cowley and the Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor. [3]
After Stanford, Norman spent two years in the U.S. Army. He returned to eastern Kentucky in 1963 to work as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Hazard Herald . Leaving newspaper work to concentrate on his fiction writing, Norman took a job with the U.S. Forest Service as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon in the summers of 1966 and 1967. [4] In 1971, his novel Divine Right's Trip was published in The Last Whole Earth Catalog and subsequently by the Dial Press and Bantam Books. [5] Norman was one of the founders of the Briarpatch Network in 1974, with Richard Raymond and Michael Phillips. [6] In 1977, his book of short stories Kinfolks, which received Berea College's Weatherford Award, was published by Gnomon Press. [7]
In 1979, Norman joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as an associate professor of English. He served as Director of the English Department's Creative Writing Program from 2000 to 2014. [8] In 1996 his work as a fiction writer, filmmaker, and cultural advocate was honored at the Fifteenth Annual Emory and Henry College Literary Festival, which celebrates significant writers in the Appalachian region. [9] In 2002 he was honored by the Eastern Kentucky Leadership Conference for outstanding contribution to the advancement of regional arts and culture. [10] In 2007 the Appalachian Studies Association awarded Norman the Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award, which recognizes exemplary contributions to Appalachia through involvement with and service to its people and communities. [11] He serves as Senior Writer-in-Residence at Hindman Settlement School's annual Appalachian Writers Workshop. [12] Norman was selected to serve as the 2009–2010 Poet Laureate for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was officially installed as Laureate on April 24, 2009. [13] On May 8, 2011, Norman was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Berea College. [14] On February 13, 2019, he was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, which recognizes distinguished Kentucky writers whose work reflects the state's rich literary heritage. [15] [16] [17] [18] He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Divine Right's Trip follows DR Davenport and Estelle, a pair of hippie stoners who leave California for eastern Kentucky, where they settle on a farm raising rabbits. The novel was originally serialized in The Last Whole Earth Catalog .
Kinfolks is a book of short stories concerning young Wilgus Collier and his relationships with his family members. [19]
Ancient Creek is a satirical folktale about a rebellion by mountain people against an absurd and oppressive king in a mythical American region. [20]
Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. The college provides a work-study grant that covers the remaining tuition fees after subtracting the total sum a student received from Pell Grant, other grants, and scholarships. Berea's primary service region is southern Appalachia but students come from more than 40 states in the United States and 70 other countries. Approximately one in three students identify as people of color.
Madison County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. At the 2020 census, its population was 92,701. Its county seat is Richmond. The county is named for Virginia statesman James Madison, who later became the fourth President of the United States.
Berea is a home rule-class city in Madison County, Kentucky, in the United States. The town is best known for its art festivals, historic restaurants and buildings, and as the home to Berea College, a private liberal arts college. The population was 15,539 at the 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing towns in Kentucky, having increased by 27.4% since 2000. Berea is a principal city of the Richmond−Berea Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Madison and Rockcastle counties. It was formally incorporated by the state assembly in 1890.
Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).
Doris Ulmann was an American photographer, best known for her portraits of the people of Appalachia, particularly craftsmen and musicians, made between 1928 and 1934.
Jean Ruth Ritchie was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way, many of which were Appalachian variants of centuries old British and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads. In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences, as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations.
Divine Right's Trip: A Novel of the Counterculture is a 1972 novel by Gurney Norman.
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state government, which provides more than half of its annual funding. KET is the dominant public broadcaster in the commonwealth, with transmitters covering the vast majority of the state as well as parts of adjacent states; the only other PBS member in Kentucky is WKYU-TV in Bowling Green. KET is the largest PBS state network in the United States; the broadcast signals of its sixteen stations cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The network's offices, network center and primary studio facilities are located at the O. Leonard Press Telecommunications Center on Cooper Drive in Lexington; KET also has production centers in Louisville and at the Kentucky State Capitol Annex in Frankfort.
Leonard W. Roberts was an early folklorist, professor, and publisher.
Silas Dwane House is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. House's fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working-class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. House is known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners and is certainly among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.
James Baker Hall was an American poet, novelist, photographer and teacher.
Katherine Rebecca Pettit was an American educator and suffragist from Kentucky who contributed to the settlement school movement of the early 20th century.
George Ella Lyon is an American author from Kentucky, who has published in many genres, including picture books, poetry, juvenile novels, and articles.
Frank X Walker is an African-American poet from Danville, Kentucky. Walker coined the word "Affrilachia", signifying the importance of the African-American presence in Appalachia: the "new word ... spoke to the union of Appalachian identity and the region's African-American culture and history". He is a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky and was the Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2013 to 2015.
Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.
Poet Laureate of Kentucky is a title awarded to a Kentucky poet by the state's Art Council. In 2013, the position was occupied by Frank X Walker, the first African-American to be so honored.
James C. Klotter is an American historian who has served as the State Historian of Kentucky since 1980. Klotter is also a history professor at Georgetown College and one of the co-authors of Kentucky's staple history book, A New History of Kentucky.
Louise Gilman Hutchins (1911–1996) was president and board director for the Mountain Maternal Health League in Berea, Kentucky for 47 years.
Jim Wayne Miller was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.
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