PIKEVILLE’S MARY ELLIOTT FLANERY In 1924 the Kentucky’s State Historical Society in Frankfort honored Mary Elliott Flanery as “Kentucky’s Most Prominent Female Citizen” in the state’s history to that point in time. As will be seen, she was a forceful and accomplished woman of eventual national import and notoriety as

William McKinley Justice was born November 27, 1893. The shy Pike County boy who would one day become a school teacher, a high-school principal and the author of five books of poetry, never saw the inside of a school room until he was nearly fourteen years old. With an over

When Professor Wade Hall chose the poem “Blue Fall” for inclusion in The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State in 2005, he referred to the “reclusive” Bruce Bennett Brown as “one of the least known of Kentucky’s important literary figures.” In fact, Brown’s obituary in 2016 makes

Quentin R. Howard is perhaps best remembered as the founder and editor of Wind, a nationally respected literary journal. To be fair, his reputation should not stop there. The Kentuckian who provided a forum for writers around the globe was himself a gifted story teller and poet.  Howard was born September

It was January in the El Nino winter of 1977 and Pike County lay prostrate under twelve inches of snow. The creeks were frozen, roads were closed, and all right-thinking humanity had retreated indoors. Nothing seemed to be stirring in this arctic landscape-except me. I was a mail carrier on

Gayle Compton may be the only politically correct writer working in Appalachia. He is not impressed by the rich and famous. He writes about the most interesting and most misunderstood people in America, the common people of Eastern Kentucky–his people, from the hard-working to the bare-assed and proud. Son of