WKU Libraries blog

Mr. Guillerman spoke as part of our Kentucky Live series on Thursday, October 15th at Barnes & Noble on Campbell Lane.

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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Author Georgia Green Stamper spoke about her book in the “Kentucky Live Series” on Thursday, April 9, 2009 at Barnes & Noble.

Her writing has garnered a host of awards and literary medallions from groups such as Lincoln Memorial University’s Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, the Carnegie Center, and the Kentucky Arts Foundation. In 2008 her first book of essays You Can Go Anywhere from the Crossroads of the World was published by Wind Publications. A reviewer from the Courier Journal called It “elegant in its simplicity—as well as simply elegant.” Elisabeth Knight, reviewing it for the Daily News commented “without her deft touch with the pen and her thought provoking and decisive verbal portraits, much of what she records might be lost in another generation.”

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A native of Owen County in North Central Kentucky Georgia grew up on a tobacco farm on Eagle Creek not far from Corinth. She writes that the building of US Highway 25 in the 1920s though Corinth caused a population boom sending the towns numbers soaring to 265. After graduating from Transylvania University she taught English and theater and coached speech. She and her husband, an executive with Ashland Inc. lived in Ashland and raised three daughters.

When the last of her three daughters had graduated from college in 1999 she turned her attentions to writing. Her essays have been published in literary anthologies like New Growth (Jesse Stuart Foundation); Tobacco (Wind Publications); Daughters of the Land (Texas Tech University Press) and the Journal of Kentucky Studies.

In 2004 she began writing a bi-weekly column, Georgia on My Mind, for the Owenton News Herald. Her most recent story quite fittingly coming during “March Madness and the Sweet Sixteen Basketball Tournaments” describes the Corinth High School (student body 74) boys basketball team which won the Kentucky State Championship in April 1930 and played in the National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament in Chicago. Their coach was Ted Hornback who would later be Athletic Director at WKU.

In 2006 she became a regular commentator for NPR member station WUKY in Lexington, Kentucky which has broadcast more than 60 of her commentaries including memorable ones on the “perils of dieting” which tells how a childhood incident of making “manure pies” prepared her to do battle with Atkins, South Beach and Weight Watchers. Her five grandchildren provide fodder for other tales.

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On March 5th, 2009, WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” series presented “Jefferson Bass and The Body Farm Novels.” Jefferson Bass is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Dr. Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, founded the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility—“The Body Farm”—a quarter-century ago. He is the author and coauthor of more than two hundred scientific publications, as well as a critically acclaimed memoir about his career, Death’s Acre. Dr. Bass is also a dedicated teacher, honored as National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Jefferson is a veteran journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. His writings have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and Popular Science, and broadcast on National Public Radio. The coauthor of Death’s Acre, he is also the writer and producer of two highly rated National Geographic documentaries about the Body Farm.

Unfortunately Dr. Bass had to miss the presentation due to his illness. After Jon Jefferson’s talk, he signed their books for the enthusiastic audience.

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WKU Libraries hosted noted wildlife specialist Tom Barnes Thursday, February 12 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers as part of its Kentucky Live! Series. As Professor of Forestry and Wildlife Specialist at the University of Kentucky, he is a frequent commentator on wildlife management and animal damage control.

“Barnes is a frequent author for Kentucky Gardener, Kentucky Home and Gardening Magazine, Kentucky Afield and Back Home in Kentucky,” said Brian Coutts, Department Head of Public Services at WKU Libraries. “He’s regularly seen and heard on Kentucky radio and television and has presented more than 400 educational programs on a variety of wildlife related topics.”

In 1998 his first book Gardening for the Birds was published by the University Press of Kentucky. He followed that with a stunningly beautiful Kentucky’s Last Great Places in 2002 which included observations, anecdotes, and more than 100 of his full-color photos drawn from a thirteen-year exploration of little studied areas of the state. In 2004 he published Wildflowers and Ferns of Kentucky. His newest book Rare Wildflowers of Kentucky authored with Deborah White and Marc Evans documents Kentucky’s signature rare plants and includes 220 gorgeous full color photographs by Barnes. Barnes signed copies of his newest book following the presentation.

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WKU Libraries’ Kentucky Live! presented Jack Montgomery about his new book American Shamans: Traditional Healers & the Folk-Magic Tradition at Barnes and Noble on the evening of December 4, 2008.

Magical healings, ghostly encounters, and alternate realities have been a part of American society since the first colonial settlements. In his book, Jack Montgomery provides ample historical and personal material to reveal a largely hidden world, primarily influenced by African, Celtic and German roots, that still exists today.

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WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” program presented Prof. Brian Leung from the Department of English, University of Louisville on the evening of November 13, 2008. He talked about creative writing and his world-famous books to an audience consisting of mainly WKU students in Barnes and Noble’s conference room. He signed his books after his talk.

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WKU Libraries presented Dew Curtis, founder of the acclaimed Fark.com on the evening of October 23, 2008 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Dew talked about “how mass media tries to pass off crap as news,” a topic that constitutes the title of one of his books. After his presentation, he signed the book for its buyers.

This presentation was part of the talk series known as “Kentucky Live! The Best of the Southern Culture.” For future presentations, please visit www.wku.edu/library/events/kylive/.

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WKU Libraries’ Kentucky Live! presented Kristine McCusker who spoke about her new book “Lonesome Cowgirls & Honky-Tonk Angels: The Women of Barn Dance Radio,” at Barnes and Noble on September 11 2008.

Popular between the two world wars, American barn dance radio evoked comforting images of a nostalgic and stable past for listeners beset by economic problems at home and worried about totalitarian governments abroad. Sentimental images such as the mountain mother and the chaste everybody’s-little-sister “girl singer” helped to sell a new consumer culture and move commercial country music from regional fare to national treasure. Kristine M. McCusker examines the gendered politics of these images through the lives and careers of six women performers.

Kristine M. McCusker is an associate professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University. She is coeditor of A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music.

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Dr. Mark F. Sohn, a food historian, and Pikeville College professor, presented “Appalachian Home Cooking” at Barnes & Noble on Thursday, April 10, 2008. Dr. Sohn showed how food traditions in Appalachia had developed over two centuries from dinner on the grounds, church picnics, school lunches, and family reunions as he celebrated regional signatures such as dumplings, moonshine, and country ham. This program was part of the “Kentucky Live!” series organized by the WKU Libraries.

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Ronnie Dreistadt, Outreach Educator at the Kentucky Derby Museum, presented “Derby Legends and Other ‘Truths’” at Barnes & Noble on Thursday March 6th. He covered 134 years of Derby history through stories and legends.

Some of the horses and people he mentioned include Aristides, winner of the first Derby; Outlaw Frank James, one of the first “celebrities” to attend the race; Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner; and Secretariat, which still holds the record for the fastest running horse in the history of Derby.

This program is part of the “Kentucky Live!” series organized by the WKU Libraries.

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