In his 1956 autobiography, The Year of My Rebirth, Jesse Stuart briefly mentions the murder of “Nick” Nickapopolis, a pack peddler who worked W-Hollow on a monthly basis in the 1850s. Nick became a monthly regular for many years, normally spending about two days [...]
Beginning in 1937, a new book had been tumbling around in Jesse Stuart’s head. It was a book about education—a hymn and personal testimony to the profession of teaching. In 1948, he finished the book, and it was published the following year. “The Thread [...]
Unlike Harriette Arnow and Jesse Stuart, whose novels have appeared on best-seller lists, James Still (1906-2001) never won a popular national audience. He did, however, win many honors and was well praised by a small but select band of supporters until late in his [...]
My friend Sam Piatt died on June 25 at the age of 88. He was a much-loved man and a much-respected journalist. Like thousands of others in northeastern Kentucky and surrounding areas, I enjoyed his weekly column in The Daily Independent, where he had [...]
Ninety years ago, a young man from Kentucky borrowed $150, gathered up his Oliver typewriter, packed a trunk short on clothes and long on manuscript pages, and headed for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a master’s degree. He was essentially a farmer, [...]
In 1985, I moved to Ashland to assume the executive and literary leadership of the Jesse Stuart Foundation, an organization that had been created in 1979, five years before Stuart’s death, to manage his literary estate. With assistance from hundreds of people, including Keith [...]
The court-martial of Daniel Boone is a well authenticated but quite obscure incident in the life of the famed frontiersman. Allan W. Eckert’s first full-length novel, “The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone,” recreates the legendary Kentuckian’s severest test – the trial for his life at [...]
In this family history, "Raft Tide and Railroad: How We Lived and Died — Collected Memories and Stories of an Appalachian Family and Its Seventh Son,” Appalachian author, poet, and editor Dr. Edwina Pendarvis, was guided by sage advice from a grandmother, Jet Johnson, [...]
The James Still Room at Morehead State University houses many of the late author’s manuscripts, photographs, documents, books, poems, and personal memorabilia. At one time, this collection also included approximately one dozen high-grade gold figurines, standing no more than four inches tall. Still had [...]
It is the mid-1700s, and England’s colonists in North America are eager to explore and settle the forest frontier west of the Appalachian mountains. This is the setting of the new book (2021), “Blood and Treasure.” The guide to this epic narrative is America’s first [...]
