Festival Lineup

The Appalachian Literary Arts Festival invites you to experience the richness of literary arts in a vibrant setting. Join us for a weekend that ignites creativity, fosters collaboration, and enhances community engagement through literature.

Keynote

Crystal Wilkinson

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent recipient of a Writing Freedom fellowship , is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a national-bestselling culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor and Director of the Divsion of Creative Writing. Her memoir Heartsick is forthcoming from Crown.

George Ella Lyon

George Ella Lyon has published award-winning books for readers of all ages, and her poem, “Where I’m From,” has been used as a model by teachers around the world. Recent titles include She Let Herself Go (poems) and the following picture books: “Which Side Are You On?” The Story of a Song, and All the Water in the World (both CCBC Choices), The Pirate of Kindergarten (Schneider Award) and You and Me and Home Sweet Home (Jane Addams Honor). Originally from the mountains of Kentucky, Lyon works as a freelance writer and teacher based in Lexington, where she lives with her husband, writer and musician, Steve Lyon. They have two grown sons.

Musicians/Authors

Will Oldham

Will Oldham makes his living writing songs and singing them, primarily working with the nom de guerre Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Oldham lives in Louisville, Ky., with his wife, the artist Elsa Hansen Oldham, and their daughter. The newest BPB record is We Are Together Again.

Matthew Sidney Parsons

Matthew S. Parsons is a Kentucky songwriter, poet, and educator whose work blends traditional music, literature, and Appalachian storytelling. He wrote the title track on Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ Grammy-nominated album I Built a World and performs widely as a solo artist and with multi-instrumentalist Logan Cooper, weaving original songs and poetry rooted in place.

Parsons holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has taught songwriting, literature, and traditional music through programs including Morehead State University, Berea College, and Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop, where he helps students develop craft, voice, and artistic confidence.

Doug Van Gundy

Doug Van Gundy is a nationally-known Appalachian musician who has performed and taught throughout the United States and in Canada and Great Britain. Doug learned music in his family, his hometown of Elkins, West Virginia, and from master musicians Mose Coffman (1905 – 1995) and Dwight Diller (1946 – 2023). In 2017, Doug was recognized as a Master Artist by the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. For the past 29 years he has played fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and harmonica with Paul Gartner as the old-time string duo, Born Old.

Doug also directs the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, West Virginia. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in dozens of journals, including The Guardian, Poets & Writers, Poetry, The Oxford American, and Guernica. He is co-editor of the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary Writing from West Virginia (WVU Press) and the author of a book of poems, A Life above Water (Red Hen Press). His second poetry collection is forthcoming.

Roberta Schultz & Raison D’Etre

Roberta Schultz, author of Deep Ends, A Chorus of Strays and Underscore, is a maker of songs, poems and drum circles. She writes some of her songs on a mountain in North Carolina, and is co-founder of the Poet & Song Series with her trio, Raison D’Etre. You can find out more at RobertaSchultz.com and raison3.com.

Panelists

The Women of Appalachia Project

The Women of Appalachia Project™ was created to address discrimination directed at women from the Appalachian region by encouraging participation from women artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences to come together, to embrace the stereotype, to show the whole woman; beyond the superficial factors that people use to judge her.

Working together, women united, we:

Seek out venues where women's issues can be examined, addressed, dissected, embellished, and safely shared with audiences and each other through presentations of visual and spoken word art.

Empower and strengthen Appalachian visual, literary and performing women artists through fellowship and positive community connections.

Provide opportunities for a diverse group of woman to share their art, receive recognition and encouragement, and build strong networks so they continue to thrive, while introducing diverse populations to one of Appalachian's greatest assets, its artists.

Walk with an Author

Ann Colbert

Dr. Ann Colbert has been a family and palliative care physician in Eastern Kentucky for four decades. She worked in Belize as the volunteer medical director of Hillside Clinic and has also worked at clinics and hospitals in Africa and Mexico. Since her retirement from clinical medicine in 2023, she devotes time to music, writing and social activism. She has published multiple commentaries about her experiences with end of life care and international health. These pieces can be found at anncolbez.wordpress.com as well as in the Kentucky Academy of Family Practice Journal. Her first work of fiction was a novel published in 2024 titled Ava Finds Time: A Tale of Medicine and Music in Appalachia. She lives on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Morehead with her partner and her faithful companion. One is human, the other a canine.

Literary Show Keynote/Emcee

Gwen Akers

G. Akers is a writer who has grown and lived in the mountains her life. She is an aspiring English professor and recipient of the Kentucky Foundation for Women’s firestarter award. Her work can be seen in Still:The Journal, and in Morehead Literary Journal: Inscape.

Poetry Writing Workshop

Bernard Clay

Bernard Clay is a Kentucky native who grew up in Louisville. He has spent years developing a deep appreciation of the state's unique natural and urban areas. Bernard earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky Creative Writing Program and is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work can be found in various journals and anthologies. He currently lives on Scorpion Hollow Farm in eastern Kentucky with his herbalist partner Lauren, founder of Resilient Roots, where he homesteads and continues writing. English Lit (Swallow Press, 2021) is his first poetry collection.

Creative Non-fiction Writing Workshop

Mandi Fugate Sheffel

Mandi Fugate Sheffel was born and raised in Red Fox, Ky. She is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University and is currently the Sycamore Fund Project Coordinator at The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. She is the board vice chair of Mountain Association. Additionally, she owns and operates Read Spotted Newt, an independent bookstore in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Her personal essays and opinion pieces can be found in Still: The Journal, Lexington-Herald Leader, Courier Journal and Salon. Her memoir, The Nature of Pain available now through The University Press of Kentucky, was voted one of the seven best new nonfiction books of October 2025 by Book Riot.

Fiction Writing Workshop

Gwenda Bond

Gwenda Bond is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the first official Stranger Things novel, Suspicious Minds. She also clearly escaped from a classic screwball romantic comedy. Her recent books include the romantic comedies Mr. & Mrs. Witch, and The Match Made in Hell series, which includes Not Your Average Hot Guy and The Date from Hell. She cofounded the charitable efforts Creators 4 Comics and the Lexington Writer’s Room, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with a veritable zoo of adorable doggos and queenly cats.

Cross-genre Writing Workshop

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is an Appalachian author, advocate, educator, and past Kentucky Teacher of the Year. His writing has appeared in a number of publications, including Appalachian Journal, The Louisville Review, Southern Humanities, Good River Review, and Salvation South. His debut collection, Gay Poems for Red States, was featured on Good Morning America, named a Book Riot Best Book, a Top Ten Over the Rainbow Book by the American Library Association, a Whippoorwill Honor Book, and received a Stonewall Honor award. He lives with his husband and three cats in rural Kentucky.

Publisher Showcase

Meet the Publishers

Click here to view the list of publishers that will be setup at the Appalachian Literary Arts Festival. COMING SOON

Author Showcase

Meet the Authors

Click here to view the list of authors who will be tabling at the Appalachian Literary Arts Festival. COMING SOON