Kentucky Book Festival

09/01/2026

08/29/2026

Have you been to Morehead this weekend? We hope to see you tomorrow at the Appalachian Literary Arts Festival! Kentucky Humanities will be there tomorrow (Sunday), so stop by!

08/22/2026

Will we see you at the National Book Festival today? Stop by our Kentucky Humanities booth in the Roadmap to Reading! Get your map stamped & pick up some swag!

08/11/2026

Congratulations to our current Kentucky Poet Laureate Kathleen Driskell selected as a 2026 Poet Laureate Fellow for the The Academy of American Poets!

Meet the 2026 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellows!

We are proud to announce the twenty-two poets laureate serving cities, counties, states, and Tribal communities across the United States who will receive $50,000 to create an ambitious public poetry project rooted in their community.

Their work will bring poetry into classrooms, parks, libraries, jails, festivals, sidewalks, watersheds, and neighborhoods through workshops, anthologies, public art, performances, archives, and more.

The Academy will also provide $81,000 in matching grants to fourteen local nonprofit organizations collaborating with Fellows on their projects.

Meet the 2026 Fellows and discover the work they will bring to life: https://bit.ly/3RK2p5Y

The Poet Laureate Fellowships are made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation.

07/09/2026

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05/18/2026

We've extended the deadline for authors to apply for the 2026 Kentucky Book Festival! You now have two more weeks to get that application submitted before 5pm on Friday, 29 May 2026!

05/08/2026

Working on that novel, memoir, or poetry collection? Need some inspiration? Need guidance on what's next? Or just want to talk to other creatives in the same place? One of your best resources is the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning and their fantastic Books In Progress Conference is just around the corner on June 5th & 6th! More details at the link in comments!

04/13/2026

Kentucky’s rich literary heritage is something to celebrate, and we're excited to share it with you. All month long, we'll post videos from Kentucky's Poets Laureate and several Affrilachian Poets, a literary collaborative founded in Kentucky marking 35 years and still going strong in 2026. Join us as we highlight some amazing voices and celebrate the power of poetry in Kentucky and beyond.

Today, we launch another week of videos with a remembrance of a beloved Kentucky Poet Laureate whom we lost last October, Gurney Norman. Here’s a recording from Gurney reading his poem “Allegiance” at Kentucky Writers Day back in 2011. Growing up in Hazard, Alais to be specific, he graduated from UK with degrees in English and journalism, then received the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford. He served in the US Army, worked as a reporter at the Hazard Herald, and spent a few years as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains, before returning to UK as a renowned professor and mentor. His books include DIVINE RIGHT’S TRIP, KINFOLKS, ANCIENT CREEK, and ALLEGIANCE. Gurney’s legacy continues through the many Appalachian and Kentucky writers whom he taught and mentored, as well as the legions of folks who have read or heard his work.



https://youtu.be/Zk8nRWujzu4