Winter in Kentucky, c. 1810

I recently finished reading Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable narrative poem Brother To Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices. The poem concerns a real incident that occurred near Paducah, Kentucky—the murder of a slave by Thomas Jefferson’s two nephews in 1811. Robert Penn Warren, who was born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, is the only…

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New Toni Morrison Novel Set For Spring Publication

Nobel Prize winning author and Lorain, Ohio native Toni Morrison has a new novel coming out in April of 2015. The novel is entitled God Help The Child, and it concerns the impact of childhood traumas on several adult characters. This will be Toni Morrison’s eleventh novel. Her last novel, Home, appeared in 2012. She…

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President Lincoln: Master of American Prose

February 12 marks the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who is not only one of our greatest Presidents—perhaps the greatest American President—but one of the great leaders in world history. Lincoln is also arguably the greatest writer among the Presidents. All of our Presidents have left behind a body of writing, usually consisting of policy…

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Clark Gable, Son of Cadiz, Ohio

  Clark Gable, the legendary actor who has been called “The King of Hollywood,” was born in Cadiz, Ohio, a small town in eastern Ohio’s Harrison County, on February 1, 1901. His father, William Henry “Will” Gable was an oil well driller who later attempted farming. Gable’s mother died when he was ten months old,…

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