Kentucky Book Festival

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!

05/11/2026

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

04/12/2026

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 feature former Kentucky Poet Laureate Joe Survant reading the title poem from his new book, THE STONE, published this year by Accents Publishing. We recorded this one after his appearance on the MediaLex Radio show Kentucky Writers Roundtable. Joe is Professor Emeritus at Western Kentucky University. He is the author of seven collections of poems, most recently, View from the Stork Building, from Larkspur Press. He is the winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press and a recipient of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council, The Asia Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the NEH. Individual poems have been published in Malaysia, China, Japan, Singapore and the U.K., as well as in the U.S. He served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate 2002–2004.

04/11/2026

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 share a stunning video poem from Affrilachian Poet Ellen Hagan in collaboration with David Flores, “To Bouquet and Bloom” from BLOOMING FIASCOES. Ellen is a writer, performer, and educator. Her books include CROWNED, HEMISPHERE, WATCH US RISE (YA collaboration with Renée Watson), BLOOMING FIASCOES, RECKLESS, GLORIOUS, GIRL, DON’T CALL ME A HURRICANE, ALL THAT SHINES, and TELL ME EVERY LIE (YA collaboration with David Flores). Ellen's poems and essays can be found in online and print journals. She is the recipient of a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the 2013 NoMAA Creative Arts Grant, and received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts.



https://youtu.be/0462MBIlkEE

04/10/2026

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 celebrate Affrilachian Poet Amanda Johnston with her poem “The Soldier’s Mother” that originally appeared in CALLALOO’s Black Appalachia special edition (Winter 2024).
Amanda is a writer, visual artist, and the 61st Poet Laureate of Texas. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and LOCK & KEY, as well as the full-length collection ANOTHER WAY TO SAY ENTER. She is the editor of the anthology PRAISESONG FOR THE PEOPLE: POEMS FROM THE HEART AND SOUL OF TEXAS. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth Radio Hour, Bill Moyers, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, and the Academy of American Poets. She is a former Board President of the Cave Canem Foundation and the founder of Torch Literary Arts.

04/09/2026

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 bring you a brilliant and powerful historical poem from Affrilachian Poet Crystal Good. This poem, “Black Diamonds,” originally published in BLACK BONE: 25 YEARS OF THE AFFRILACHIAN POETS available from the University Press of Kentucky at https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813175232/black-bone/, honors the widows of coal miners after the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, and was briefly barred from a state event in what officials later called a “misunderstanding.” She is a sixth-generation West Virginian, poet, performer, and publisher of Black by God, the West Virginian, a news and storytelling organization. Crystal is the author of Valley Girl, serves as the Social Media Senator for the Digital District of West Virginia, and is an honorary citizen and Duchess of Hazard, Kentucky. She is currently working on a book about Bricktop and Black political thought in West Virginia with the University of Kentucky Press.

04/08/2026

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 spotlight Lee Pennington, appointed Kentucky Poet Laureate in 1983. In this video, he shares a resounding tribute to those who have come before us and offers hope for the future with his poem “Whispers from the Ancestors” from his 2017 book, DAUGHTERS OF LEDA. Lee is the author of 23 books, including 3 Pulitzer Prize nominations. He has had over 1300 poems published in more than 300 magazines in America and abroad. He has had nine plays produced, wrote the script for THE MOONSHINE WAR (MGM, 1970, starring Alan Alda, Richard Widmark), and has published thousands of poems, articles, and short stories. His novel, MOMENT OF THE BUTTERFLY, is scheduled to be released by Hydra Publications in the near future.

A graduate of Berea College and the University of Iowa, Lee taught for nearly 40 years, the last 32 as Professor of English and creative writing at Jefferson Community College until he retired in 1999. Three films are presently in the works about Lee: a documentary on his life, a movie about his Harlan County teaching experience where he was run out of town and had contracts taking out on his head–all because of a book of poetry his students published in 1967, and a series called THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF LEE PENNINGTON which premiered at the University of Louisville last June, won Runner Up Award for Best Documentary at the Imaginarium Indy Film Festival, and will have its YouTube premiere in 2026.