The Jack Ellis Writers Workshop

New year’s resolutions reflect personal values. Many resolutions relate to our physical being: we resolve to lose weight or start an exercise program. Some resolutions relate to strengthening our spiritual lives, but it seems to me that people should also resolve to improve their minds.In 2024, I encourage you to start a reading program. Watch television less and read more. Toward that end, I invite you to join the Jesse [...]

Well into his sixties and with a history of heart problems, Jesse Stuart continued to write and publish at an incredible pace. He also continued to teach and directed seven creative writing workshops at Murray State University from 1969 to 1977. The University established the summer workshop program a year after conferring an honorary doctorate upon Stuart. The program began with fifty-eight students in 1969 and gradually peaked at [...]

“True Christmas Stories From the Heart of Appalachia,” is a book that captures the spirit of Christmas in 43 stories by 39 authors. Thirty-five of the stories are from Kentucky and the others are from neighboring states. This book was sponsored by JSF Board Member Ron Cartee and his wife Diane and dedicated to their great-niece, Rhonda Nunley, a Greenup county educator who died of cancer on December 3, [...]

After five years of intense research and thoughtful writing, Jesse Stuart Foundation Board Member Edwina Pendarvis has published “Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia.” This boundary-crossing book views ballet through the eyes of twenty-four Appalachian women — most from the Tri-State area — who began their ballet lessons in childhood. Ballet is not a dance form people generally associate with Appalachia, but it is central to the lives of [...]