This was part of the Java City-Helm Library concert series sponsored by the Independence Bank.

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His first novel, The Baker’s Boy, was published by Southern Methodist University Press in 2008 and in 2009 won the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. He drew inspiration from his work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Belize in the 1970s.

Set in Central American and Middle Tennessee it tells the story of a former Peace Corps worker at a boys’ training school in Belize near the Guatemalan border who thirty years later is toiling as a baker while still haunted by his earlier experience. Kitterman spent almost a decade writing the novel which has drawn praise from critics everywhere.

Kitterman coordinates the creative writing program and visiting writers series at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN where he’s been a member of the faculty since 1994.

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Robert Dickey was the featured speaker in this month’s Kentucky Live! on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at Barnes & Noble.  Dickey attended WKU and graduated from Centre  College.  Following a stint in the marines and a hitch as a reporter for the Bowling Green Daily News he graduated from Vanderbilt Law School.  His first client was Beech Bend Park owner Charles Garvin.  In Charles Garvin’s Dynasty of Dimes he tells the history of a man who he calls an “eccentric entrepreneur” who built an amusement park “empire” in Bowling Green, Kentucky based on 10 cent admissions.  It’s a fascinating story spanning four decades, and one indelibly linked with the tourist business in South Central Kentucky.

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Montell, a native of Rock Bridge in Monroe County, founded the Folk Studies Program at WKU in 1972 and taught several generations of students there between 1969 and 1999. He’s the author of 22 books with such enticing titles as: Ghosts Along the Cumberland; Killings: Folk Justice in the Upper South; and Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky.

In his newest book he recounts stories of unusual items in caskets, mournful pretenders, long-winded preachers, and even pallbearers falling into graves. They all serve to demonstrate the pivotal role played by morticians in Kentucky life and culture.

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Michael D. Guillerman worked for the Peabody Coal Company from 1974 to 1991. Over his long career, his jobs included belt shoveler, timberman, shooter, drill and shuttle car operator, rock duster, and finally section foreman. Now retired, he lives with his wife Marie in Union county, Kentucky.

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Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

September 26 - October 3, 2009

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States. This year WKU Libraries hosted exhibits on the Cravens 4th Floor and at the ERC. The ERC display included quotations from students in Children’s and Young Adult Literature classes about how their lives had been impacted by reading some of these “challenged” books. The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.

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More about the exhibit.

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