Conference to feature Robert Gipe, Gurney Norman, Martha Billips, and more
Robert Gipe, author of the award-winning Trampoline: An Illustrated Novel, will be appearing at the annual Arnow Conference on Appalachian Literature and Culture, to be held on Friday, April 1, at Somerset Community College.The conference, named for renowned author and Wayne County native Harriette Simpson Arnow, will begin in the Harold Rogers Student Commons building on the SCC Somerset Campus, located at 808 Monticello Street in Somerset. The theme of the 2016 conference is “Telling Our Stories: An Appalachian Tradition.”
Gipe recently received the 2015 Weatherford Award for Fiction for Trampoline. Presented by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association, the award is given to authors whose books “best illuminate the challenges, personalities and unique challenges of the Appalachian South,” according to the Weatherford website.
Gipe will be joined at the Arnow Conference by such literary luminaries as Gurney Norman, author of Divine Right's Trip; Anne Shelby, author of The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales; and poet and essayist Bobbi Buchanan, author of the forthcoming chapbook Tiny Little Beauty. The conference’s keynote speaker is Dr. Martha Billips, who recently contributed the essay “Harriette Simpson Arnow: A Writer’s Life” to the 2015 collection Kentucky Women: Their Lives and Times.
Registration for the conference costs $25 and includes a light breakfast and a catered lunch.
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