A Force of Nature: The Life and Work of Jesse Stuart

He was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, the son of poor parents who moved from one Kentucky hill farm to another, working hard to make the land pay. His father was illiterate. But he would grow up to become a prestigious and highly paid writer who traveled the world and eventually owned all the land…

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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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Allen Tate: The Man of Letters Confronts The Modern Wasteland

Today marks the birthday of John Orley Allen Tate, born in Winchester, Kentucky on November 19, 1899. In his lifetime, Tate made his mark as poet, critic, and novelist, although he never achieved the level of both critical and popular success achieved by his friend and fellow Kentuckian Robert Penn Warren. Tate attended both private…

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Sugar-Boy

“He always sat up front with Sugar-Boy and looked at the speedometer and down the road and grinned to Sugar-Boy after they got through between the mule’s nose and the gasoline truck. And Sugar-Boy’s head would twitch, the way it always did when the words were piling up inside of him and couldn’t get out,…

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Robert Penn Warren: Born April 24, 1905.

The distinguished novelist, poet, critic and man of letters Robert Penn Warren, best known to many readers for his novel All The King’s Men, was born on this date in 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky. Robert Penn Warren is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry. He was also the…

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