I'm Jennifer Mattox.

I'm the executive director of the Carnegie Center.

And I want to thank all of you a for coming out and joining us tonight for this exciting event.

Now, under the leadership of retired executive director Neil Chethik, we founded the Kentucky Writers Hall ofFame in 2013 to honor Kentucky writers whose work reflects the character and culture of our commonwealth and also to educate Kentuckians about our state's rich literary heritage.

Now, obviously, if you all are all here tonight, you already know But wait until you see what we have coming up soon.

In fact, Kentucky is home to numerous nationally and internationally recognized writers and always has been.

Why is it the Kentucky writers are so incredibly good at what t Some say there's something in the water.

Some say.

Some say they are inspired by Kentucky's beautiful landscapes.

And others say that they began to learn telling stories as a child.

Through our state's oral storytelling tradition.

We're also blessed with a number of resources for writers available to people who want to write.

Kentucky is home to several outstanding collegiate writing programs, and writers teach at community sites like the Carnegie Center and Libraries and now even online.

And, you know, people anywhere in Kentucky can learn how to improve their writing.

Tonight, we█ll induct some of our state's best writers, many who are also talented writing instructors and celebrate others whose accomplishments are being recognized beyond the page.

And now let's begin this year's Hall of Fame inductions.

Since the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame was created in 2013 we have inducted 71 writers, 22 living and 49 from the past.

Tonight, we add six more writers to the Hall of Fame Inductees are chosen by public nominations, but from public nominations by two committees of Kentucky writers and readers, a committee at the Carnegie Center compiles a list of candidates each year from those nominated that is then ranked by a committee chosen by the Kentucky Arts Council.

Based on those rankings, the Carnegie Center Committee then chooses a class of inductees.

For living writers.

This is a sort of lifetime achievement award.

Although many of our Hall of Fame inductees are still writing and will be for many years, for some deceased inductees, their fame may have happened decades ago.

For others, they may not have received the recognition during their lifetimes.

But with all of them, the quality of their writing has stood the test of time.

Jeff Worley is poet█s poet.

He has a love affair with language, with getting it right.

In his many books, he practices what I call the Gallo principle, not Gallows Gallo.

No wine before.

Its time.

Originally from Kansas, he is a Kentuckian by choice rather than birth.

Having had a professional career as an associate editor of UK█s Odyssey, a magazine trumpeting the many accomplishments of its faculty on the side.

He has published, get this over 500 poems in journals and magazines, many of them collected in award winning books, the most recent of which is I think it's the most recent.

The Poet laureate of Aurora Avenue.

I recommend it to you His reputation extends well beyond Kentucky.

I first met Jeff in May have in the late eighties, but I know it was the nineties as a member of a writing group that he and Marcia Harlow I know some of you out there know Marcia that they formed for years.

We met every two weeks and rigorously critiqued each other's poetry, usually for the better.

Jeff is that rare poet who mixes seriousness of purpose and depth of insight with rich humor.

His work is accessible.

No writer I know writes poems more carefully than he does.

His poems have as many strata as Red River Gorge.

They are irresistibly human.

In 2009, he became a ringmaster of Kentucky Poets selecting and editing the only real anthology I know of contemporary Kentucky Poetry.

The University Press of Kentucky published what comes down to US 25 contemporary poets.

The best, perhaps the only Kentucky anthology of its kind.

A former Kentucky poet laureate, Jeff is among the top half dozen poets writing in Kentucky.

He is a poet█s poet.

If you haven't read him, do.

And I think you'll agree.

Right now, let's hear from a poet's poet.

Thank you, Richard.

I owe you one.

And thanks to all of you who are here this evening to help escort us into the Kentucky Writer's Hall of Fame.

It's impossible in the time I have to thank everyone who has helped get me here.

So I'll focus instead on just three incidents that significantly changed my life as a Kentucky writer In the late eighties, the writer Marcia Harlow and I started a poetry group modeled after the MFA workshops that she and I had taken.

We invited local poets whose work we admired, and the Lexington Frankfort Writers Group flourished for around 25 years, all of us helping each other with sometimes very stubborn drafts of the poems.

A lot of you know what I mean?

We were there following a question that Mary Oliver once asked.

Who wants to see a bird almost fly?

A special thanks to the group's most regular members Marcia Susan Coburn, Tom Webster, Mike Moran, Leatha Kendrick, George Ella Lyon and Richard Taylor.

Another important and life changing development was sparked by my wife, Linda's love of nature.

All her life, she badly wanted a cabin in the woods.

Like our Lexington friends Jack and Nancy Furlong had.

And this became a reality, in I think it was 2009, possibly oh Nancy alerted Linda to a place just up the hill from theirs off Leatherwood Road at Cave Run Lake Linda snapped this up immediatel And we had many good times there with a new set of neighbors and friends, and most notably Roger and Ellen Prince.

It was an amazing place for a writer to work.

I had a small screened in workspace in the back, and poems just jumped out of the woods at me and still do.

And finally, a huge thanks to my wonderful neighbor and friend Tom Eblen, a terrific, productive writer.

Quite A few years ago, Tom alerted me to the possibility of a poetry box where passers by and neighbors could read a new poem and take a copy home if they wanted to.

He built the box, attached it to my stockade fence on North Ashland, just south of Aurora Avenue.

All I've had to do is make seven or so copies of a new poem every few days.

And so I get the fun work.

My favorite moment so far.

As a result of this, a box was when a girl, maybe five or six, with her mother stopped on my sidewalk out front, looked up on the porch and said, Are you the poetry man?

Yes, I said on my good days.

Then she said, Would it be okay if I put something of mine in the box?

Absolutely.

Is the answer to tha Absolutely.

And I said, by the way, we welcome new authors.

So, yes, send something along.

She followed through two days later with little story called The Fal Angel, who came back up.

This is this is the show and tell part.

Oh.

Her name is Gretta Levins.

And if anybody knows of her or her family, please let me know, because I. Ah, I will put this back in her hands if I could find her.

Maybe this incident will be important and memorable for her writing career.

I would need a whole lot more time to thank my late wife.

I hate this phrase, as I should.

So for now, I'll just say thank you, lovely woman for the 42 years.

No, that's not all that I will do.

I'll leave you with this poem titled Playing Possum.

I got the strangest email about three weeks ago.

I think it was from a young girl, but I'm not sure.

And she.

She said, if you have time next Monday, would you read that poem about you and your wife chasing a baby armadillo around your house?

And I said, Well, I'd have to write it first, but the details, details And thank you all again for being here.

it's overwhelming.

A poem called Playing Possum.

Something was gnawing at my dream and awake.

Now I hear one of our cats loudly crunching at his bowl in the kitchen.

But here in bed, I make out the shapes of all three cats, a triumvirate around my wife and me.

I leap up through the question of something wrong, honey, and stumble toward the mad chewing.

I flick on the light.

There in the corner, pink as a piglet, a baby possum startled from the bowl of kit and caboodle crumbs flaking around its tiny gash of mouth.

And here it is, Linda fully awake now, too, with not only a broom for her, but one for me.

She she flings me mine like Ricky Nelson, tossing John Wayne his loop handled carbine in Rio Bravo, which is one of my favorite film And we're shutting doors behind us and opening doors to the outside world, which clearly terrifies this arboreal rodent who's little more than a whiplash tail and provisional hiss, he scampers under the German shrunk I take a couple swipes underneath and tease out a dust covered catnip toy, a disposable Bic, and a half of what looks to be a slice of Donatos, pepper, pepperoni.

The possum folds into itself like a fist, but Linda is choking up and waving the broom Ready So I whack the thing broadside and it skids out like a top ended puck to my wife, who swings.

Her breasts Lovely in the sudden light.

Did I mention we're both bone naked?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm skating toward the wide open front door.

This two AM game of possum broom ball.

Almost fun now and woosh.

The critter so hard it cartwheels like a cartoon possum through a racket of katydids and other night fiddlers.

And lands like a wad of flubber on on the lawn as it scampers off.

Linda and I stand on the front porch victorious, holding our brooms in the manner of American Gothic.

Our next door neighbor, Jamey, home from the late shift, turns her blue Toyota into the drive, fixing us with headlights.

These these Worleys she may be saying to herself, naked house cleaning at 3 a.m., at which point there's nothing left for us to do.

But wave.

Thank you so much.

What a beautiful place.

Thank you very much.

Long ago.

Many more years than I care to count.

When I left my first grade teaching position at an elementary school in Woodford County, Debbie was hired as my replacement.

When I left my first grade teaching position at a Lexington Elementary school for a different position at that same school, guess what?

Debbie Dadey was hired as my replacement, it seems as if we were destined to work together.

But as teachers at the same school, we didn't know each other well, not until we happened to meet in the exercise room after school, and we started to talk about a common interest.

Sharing books with our students.

It was our favorite part of the day to share wonderful literature with those kids.

And so we started talking about we liked.

Then we talked about books we didn't like, and we started to wonder how did some of those books even get published?

And one of us jokingly said, Sometimes I think I could do better than that.

And then Debbie asked a very simple but not so simple question.

She said, What's stopping us from trying to write a book?

I could not come up with a good reason not to try.

I mean, I could have said, Well, because I'm clueless, because I have no idea how to write a book.

Because we are not authors, we are teachers.

But I didn't want to admit those things to Debbie.

So the next day we began writing during our 20 minute teachers lunch break.

Of course, we had a lot to learn not only about writing, but about each other as well.

So tonight, I would like to share a few things that I have learned about Debbie Dadey since that day, when we traded lifting weights for writing stories.

Debbie Dadey approaches writing the same way she approaches life with curiosity, perseverance, playfulness, optimism, creativity, kindness, generosity, a can do attitude and a determined mindset that focuses on why not?

And what if she does not recognize Obstacles as roadblocks.

She sees them as stepping stones on herpath forward, always forward, whether it is in her highly entertaining stories or during her popular school visits.

Debbie strives to connect to readers, especially reluctant readers.

She's always encouraging them, sharing with them that same can do empowerment.

Debbie has rich ties to Kentucky She was born in Morganfield and graduated high school in Henderson.

She went on to earn multiple degrees from Western Kentucky University before moving to Lexington.

She was a dedicated first grade teacher and then media specialist, also known as Librarian.

Back in those days, until Debbie and her husband Eric, moved to follow his profession.

I remember when they were getting ready to leave Lexington I was at her house.

Boxes were stacked everywhere.

They were waiting for the movers to come move them.

At that, by that time, we had written six books together and we thought our collaborative effort was over.

After all, how could we write when she was moving to Texas.

I need to remind you, all this was before the Internet Fax machines were the shiny new gadget of the day.

So we believed that we were saying goodbye to each other as well, to our writing collaboration.

But then an editor called, and they wanted to know, would we write four more books to our series?

We didn't even know we were writing a series.

They had told us were writing stand alone titles.

Companion books is what they called them.

But now they planned to turn the titles into a series and they were offering us a multiple book deal.

Of course, Debbie, with her can do Spirit, did not see the distance of nearly 1000 miles as a roadblock.

It was an opportunity.

It'll be easy, she said.

So that Christmas, each of us got fax machines under our tree and we developed a hot potato system of writing, taking turns, writing chapters, and sending them back and forth to each other as fast as we can.

Since then, Debbie Dadey and her family, including her husband Eric, and three children Nathan, Becky and Alex, crisscrossed the country, living in 8 different states, most recently moving from a log cabin in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to southern New Hampshire to be close to her grandchildren She is a popular presenter visiting schools across the United States and in countries including Germany, Belgium and Egypt, all while writing 182 traditionally published children's books with sales totaling more than 45 million copies worldwide.

Her recent titles include Never Give Up Dr.

Kati Karikó and The Race for the Future of Vaccines and the Princess Promise in Her Mini Mermaid Tales, a multicultural series from Simon and Schuster.

Debbie and her books have receiv many honors and recognitions, including Multiple weeks on the Publishers Weekly bestsellers list, the Milner Award, the Grand Forks ELBA Award, Speech Pathology book of the Year Winner.

I love this one.

The Kids Book Review for Most Enthralling Junior Fiction Award, The Gold Oppenheim Award, and many others.

And now tonight's well- deserved honors.

Please help me welcome Debbie Dadey to the 2026 Kentucky Writer's Hall of Fame.

Oh, my gosh.

She made me cry.

Well, what can I say after that?

My goodness.

Thank you so much to the Carnegie Center and the Kentucky Arts Council for selecting me for the Kentucky Writer's Hall of Fame.

It's a great honor for this western Kentucky girl to be to stand on this stage with this illustrious group.

And thank you so much for coming this evening.

And I'm proud to be here.

Thank you.

When Tom called to tell me about tonight, my mind went back to this little drawer of books I had.

Maybe you had one when you were a kid.

It was filled with all my treasures, my books.

Maybe you had some books tucked away somewhere.

But those were.

Those are my comfort that I read over and over again.

They were like my treasure and my love of reading inspired me to go to Western Kentucky University to become a teacher, a first grade teacher, and going from teaching kids to read to writing books for them to read was lovely, although not always easy.

Transition.

One of my sweetest memories, though, from teaching first graders was the moment when Mary, who had been struggling to read, looked up at me after managing to read a whole sentence by herself, said Mrs.

Dadey, I can read.

And she could, with so much joy.

And she went on to read, you know, everything she wanted to in first grade.

And that's what I wanted for every child to be able to say I can read and to love to do it.

And that what I wanted as a librarian as well.

I firmly believed in Frank Serafini.

Quote, There is no such thing as a child who hates to read.

There are only children who have not found the right book.

So it was my job as a librarian to help them find the right one.

Eventually, I believe that perhaps I had to help write them because there was a real need for books on the level between picture books which second graders were baby books.

You know, picture books were for babies.

And we want to read a grownup book, but novels were too hard for them.

So at that time, there wasn't much in between.

There were like Polk Street Kids books and what's the other one?

Oh, Nate, the Great books.

There wasn't a lot besides that.

And so I thought there was a real need for that level of books.

And fortunately, that was about the time I met Marcia Thorton Jones.

I noticed the kids in my school practically fought over one very old set of books about monster movies.

And since Marcia, I wanted to write books for kids to to encourage them to read.

We thought it was natural to write about monsters.

And since the scariest creature to me when I was growing up was a vampire, it was natural to start writing about a vampire And our love of researching folklore and legends and writing about monsters actually began in the Sayer School Librarian's office just a few blocks from here.

We were deciding one day how to fashion Mrs.

Jeepers our Vampire.

In our very first story, vampire don't wear polka dots.

Well, I very first story.

No, not really.

It was the very first story we sold.

There were quite a few before that, but the very first story we sold and we were like, Oh, what should vampire look like?

You know, should she have long, black hair?

You know, what should she look at?

And in walked the foreign language teacher at our school, Mrs.

Green, and she had long red hair and long fingernails.

We like, oh, the lights went off.

Know it was flashing neon signs and everything were like that█s our Mrs.

Jeepers.

And so we changed her just a little bit.

But we we that day, you know, Mrs.

Jeepers was born and that was the beginning of our writing career.

And we actually ended up writing as many as 12 books a year, one a month for quite several years, because Scholastic had us under contract.

And we, we learned to, like, write quickly for a while.

I don't know if we wanted to write well, but we learned to write quickly because we wrote, you know, had to fulfill our contract.

But I think it was a very good learning experience for us to make up, okay, this is what we did.

We wrote an idea.

Send it our editor, do you like this idea?

Yes, you can write that story.

Then we wrote an outline.

Send it to our editor, do you like this the way it's looking?

Yes.

No change it.

So we were able to write quicker because we wrote with an outline We had a plan for our story.

And we do that for all of our stories because it helps us to write it without getting lost.

So if you've ever written a story and you get in the middle of it, you don't know what to do next, maybe try writing an outline.

We've been very blessed to receive letters from kids all over the world, but one that I'll never forget was when I was in an elementary school in Germany and I was visiting an American school there and they had letters to me on the wall there, and one of them was from a fifth grade boy.

And I can remember it because it was short and sweet.

And he said, I've never read an entire book before until I read yours.

Fifth grade.

I read the whole thing.

It was great.

So that was a letter that was easy to remember.

But I wonder, how does a kid get to fifth grade without reading an entire book?

And I'm very thankful that perhaps I played a small part in encouraging that boy to hopefully learn to read my heartfelt thanks goes out to the children who've enjoyed the books that I've authored and coauthored, and I'm delighted to accept a place in the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame and many thanks again to the Carnegie Center and the Kentucky Arts Council for thinking to include me.

And thanks so much to Marcia Jones for for joining with me through this writing adventure and for helping to me reach children, millions of kids, so they can say reading is great Thank You.

Well, you'll be able to tell by my introduction and Marcia's introduction who is the most literary of the two of us?

Yes, it's true.

I stalked Marcia Jones for years and I thought she didn't know it but evidently she did know it.

I met when married, I took a job in Versailles Kentucky teaching first grade, and it was a position that Marcia had just left to teach at, Sayer school here in Lexington.

And a year later, I followed to Sayer.

And luckily for me, Marcia decided to switch to third grade, and I took her old first grade position.

Also.

Luckily for me, we were exercising one day and in the school weight room and decided, wouldn't it be fun to write a book together?

And I'm pretty sure Marcia was the one who said, It'll be easy.

We found out it was definitely not as easy as we thought it would be.

But you know what we have been writing about?

I think it was about a year we sold something.

The very first thing we sold was a greeting card that said, What did it say?

Two words of advice Now that you're a working mother Fast food.

We started.

Yes, we got like $100 for those words.

We were so proud.

And so that kept us going because we were getting rejections and rejections so we kept trying and that helped us a lot.

But Marcia was born in Illinois.

She moved to Kentucky when she was only five, and she never left.

After earning degrees from the University of Kentucky and Georgetown College, Marcia and her husband settled in Lexington, where she taught first and third grade, along with computer lab and gifted and talented classes.

She was the teacher students feared to get where she was, had a reputation for being so tough.

I think one kid actually cried.

The father cried.

But she was also the teacher that high schoolers would come back to for tutoring because they respected and admired her so much.

That's the kind of teacher she is.

She's a gifted teacher and writer, and I've always been in awe of her ability to craft a plot and paint a scene with lovely prose.

Her skills led her to be led her to be an author and coauthor of 137 traditionally published books for children with sales of over 45 million copies.

Her published works include mid-grade novels and picture books.

She's also coauthored the Writer's Digest story sparkers Writing for Kids The Ultimate Guide and seven chapter book series, including one of Scholastic's bestselling series of all time, The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids.

Marcia was instrumental in developing the author Academy for the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, where she's currently a mentor manuscript reviewer and teacher.

The Carnegie Center is so blessed to have her on their team, and today it is my great honor to introduce to you the best childrens author that Kentucky has ever raised.

Marcia Thornton Jones.

You know, I talked about how we did hot potato writing.

This is like hot potato introductions right?

Thank you, Debbie, not only for that wonderful introduction, but also for asking that simple question so long ago that I'm sure you said would be easy.

I'm sure it was you, but it ended up not being quite so easy at all.

That's what's stopping us from writing a book, because that question changed my life.

You have changed my life.

You know, writing is a solitary adventure for most writers.

We sit at our desks or in our spare bedroom, at kitchen tables or in parked cars, and we put words onto paper or into an app, hoping that those words will someday, maybe just possibly mean something to someone.

For many writers, we never really know.

Writing is communication through the art of scribbling.

But if we don't hear back from those to whom we're writing we don't know if our words have meant something to anyone.

But as Debbie said, we have been lucky.

Very lucky, because we have heard from many readers, readers who make comments like this.

You are the best writer in the history of book writing.

I can't ever explain what you have done for my generation, no matter how down get.

The Bailey School kids have a way of making everything seem all right.

You are my idol.

And then there was this.

I used to hate to read, but now I love to read.

Your books changed my life.

It never ceases to amaze me that kids and now adults, because it's been that many years, know the characters, the stories and the worlds that were created.

Sitting in isolation at my kitchen table or on my sofa that my words mean something to new generations that will go on to lead the world.

It makes me take a breath.

But this night, with this great honor seeing, all of you helped me to realize that I was never really writing in isolation at all.

I have the support of Debbie, and I had that of my husband of 44 years who kept me online and tech current.

Honey, I don't have a computer right now.

I need your help.

Then there are the participants in our Carnegie Center writing classes, many of whom are here tonight, and my writing group members who are willing to share their information, insights and the power of the words with other writers.

There are my friends, my special friends who gather at my dining room table, playing with stories and themes and meanings that clarify this crazy world so I can put words on the page.

There are many friends who I meet with for support, including those that meet on Thursday nights to go out to eat and talk about all the things that are bothering us.

And then there is the Carnegie Center, a literary leader in our region and beyond.

Last couple of weeks ago, I had two people, one from Southern California, one from Northern California.

The creative staff do such amazing things with relatively very little.

I've seen them.

I've been behind the scenes.

It is amazing what the small staff can do.

They are my literary family and of course I had the support of a wonderful parents.

One time my husband said I couldn't be a really good writer because I haven't suffered enough in my childhood.

I had the greatest parents ever and I had this.

I have the support of my sister, Barbara Beckham, who has pulled me back from way too many ledges by reminding me to do three simple but powerful things.

When life becomes a little bit too much.

She says, First, look where you started.

Look where you are.

Look at what you have done.

So I stand here looking at you and I think, Wow.

And I know I haven't done it all alone.

So I thank you, all of you.

The people here celebrating with us tonight, the avid readers who let us know that our words meant something to them.

To my colleagues on the stage tonight and those that stood on the stage in years past, Congratulations to my all the writers who have helped us and shared their words.

And to Debbie.

And to my family.

Thank you.

And especially thank you to the Carnegie Center and to the Kentucky Arts Council.

This is a tremendous honor, and I couldn't have done it alone.

Thank you very much.

I know you█re clapping mostly because he said final.

Thank you for these 2 hours But I guarantee you, when you get home, you'll be talking about this evening.

It's definitely been worth it.

Jesse Stewart and James Still's generation paved the way for a pantheon of Kentucky writers known fondly as the Fab Five, which featured Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, James Baker Hall and my literary father, The Late Gurney Norman.

The next generation of celebrated Kentucky writers features an activist A music critic, a playwright and essayist and editor, teacher, podcaster, film producer, award winning novelist, poet and now a mystery writer.

And they all wear the same pair of shoes.

Today is the 25th anniversary of his Clay's Quilt.

There is not a bookshelf in Kentucky worth its salt that doesn't hold a dog eared copy of at least one of his brilliant novels.

I asked Silas given all of his many noteworthy accomplishments.

What he was most proud of.

And he said his novel Southernmost, and the video he wrote for it ‘in your love█ lead to many letters and emails and encounters with people who told him they felt seen for the first time or felt enabled to come out.

He shared that those times are always overwhelming for him.

When he was poet laureate, a lot of people who were raised in trailers told him it was important to them that he talked about being raised in a trailer.

And those were proud moments for him.

He understands the world at large,is so eager to shame us for who we are.

And he really loves being part of people, laying down their shame, whether it's for how we talk or where we're from or who we love.

He said he thinks the whole reason he started writing was to be in community with people and it's in those moments when he feels like he's achieved what he always wanted to do.

About 23 years ago, we were both hired by an English department at a university in Richmond, Kentucky, to help start a new MFA program.

When we arrived, we soon discovered that some of the phd█s in the department didn't think we were qualified to teach there, and they began a mean spirited campaign to make us feel very unwelcome.

He was smart enough to leave before I did.

I left soon afterwards, but all he's done since then is prove them wrong.

And it's been a joy to watch his star rise and shine.

My mother might say if he was any better, he'd be a cast iron skillet.

Please, please welcome with me the most handsome writer in the room.

Every time he enters.

The governor's favorite writer My good buddy Silas House Thank you, Frank.

That was beautiful.

Our first books came out around the same time, and I feel like we grew up together in this literary world.

We went to grad school together.

We've been on this ride together for 30 years.

now so I█m especially honored to be inducted by Frank tonight Thank you.

To the Carnegie Center, the Kentucky Theatre, one of my favorite places, the Kentucky Arts Council and all of you for hanging in there with us tonight.

I'm especially thankful to my colleagues at Berea College for being here tonight.

And yes, thank you and my colleagues at the Naslen Mann Graduate School of Writing.

So glad I found that place.

My son is here with his wonderful partner.

Thank you for being here and my chosen family.

My mother has been in the hospital 25 days now.

I think.

So I'm going to try to get through this.

I'm pretty emotional and tired, tiredness leads to uncontrollable crying.

Sometimes.

In sixth grade, my teacher was named Olding Black and she chose me to write the class play that year.

She saw me as a writer.

In seventh grade, my English teacher read my writing and then gave me books and opened my world.

Her name is Sandra Stidham.

When I was 25 and trying to figure out what to do with the novel I had just finished, My literary mother, Lee Smith, took me under her wing and guided me to the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School, where I found a poor community that this continued to carry me through my highs And lows there I also found Mike Mullins The director of Hindman, who stepped in as a surrogate parent when I needed him the most and who helped to pave the way for me in the Kentucky literary world.

Jan Isenhour gave me my first job as a writing teacher at the Carnegie Center, and there I was, one of the first people that welcomed me into this world was Pam Papka Sexton And her children today continue her legacy of generosity.

She would be so proud of you.

All.

I also found George Ella Lyon who took me seriously, and she gave me my first blurb.

She was always kind to me.

Later, George Ella and I and several other writers worked together in the fight against mountaintop removal.

And it's one of the things I'm most proud of is that we fought back in that fight.

Wendell Berry became another mentor for me, and like a good father figure, he gently corrected me when was wrong.

Sometimes, not so greatly.

And but he always told me when I was right.

And he did that gently as well.

I Found people who were tender and kind and honest and loving.

The older I get and the longer I'm a writer, the more I understand that as the Beatles taught us, all you need is love.

And I found so much love and acceptance in Lexington since I moved here eight years ago.

I'm thankful to my writing group who are also my chosen brothers.

David, Johnny, Gavin.

I love you lads, and I say that because it's important to tell your friends that you love them and it's important for men to stop the cycle of male loneliness that is such a root of misogyny.

We tell each other that privately, so I█m saying it publicly.

So many of the writers here Gwenda, Josh, Claudia Love, Jen, Crystal, Shauna, James, Ben, Ouita, Linda Margaret, Frank.

Eric.

Jay, Tim, Wes, LaTonya, Katarina, Christian.

Beau, Tim, Tom.

Eric, so many others who make such a vibrant writing community.

I'm thankful to the LGBT community I found in this safe haven.

Many of them are here tonight and I love all of you too.

A few months ago, I and other writers were asked to contribute lines to the new sculpture downtown to capture our feelings about Lexington.

My poem goes like this.

A little fire When others left us out in the cold, our city of refuge.

This city has been that for me as a gay person, as an Appalachian refugee, and as a person of faith who also found a community here in the Episcopal Church that accepts me fully as I am.

I've been very fortunate to have found an ancient love in the form of Jason Kyle Howard, who knows me better than anybody else in the world.

I love you.

And my children Levi and Chyanne I love you and in dogs, who█ve made me a better person just by existing my childhood dogs, Arkie and Fala who was, by the way, named for the of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

So that tells you what a weird little child of was.

And the dogs of my adulthood, Rufus, Holly and Pepper.

All sorely missed.

And my current writing assistants Ari and Alice My aunt Sis another love of my life bought me my first guitar.

She handed it to me and said, Here, now, go be the next Eddie Rabbit.

She bought me my first typewriter and she gave it to me and said, Here, now go write the next Peyton Place.

Only some of you get that.

She took me to films I was too young to see, and many that helped to shape me as an artist in fundamental ways Tender Mercies.

The Exorcist.

Coal Miner's Daughter.

My cousin Alicia played The radio as loud as it would go and she let me roll the windows all the way down and hang my body out the window as she drove fast, too fast around winding country roads.

I was so lucky to have parents who didn't dismiss my dream of being a writer.

Instead, they scraped and saved to buy me the World Book Encyclopedia.

That was the Internet before we had the Internet.

My mother took me to the library, and we all know libraries are the epitome of equity and civilization.

My father did not scoff when I declared at the age of 12 that I wanted to be a writer.

Both of them are too ill to be here with me tonight.

But I say anyway.

I love you, and I thank you.

They were my first models in social justice.

I often saw them quietly helping others, not asking for recognition.

My mother worked in the lunchroom at our elementary school, and many years later I would be told by grown classmates that she had bought them clothes or slipped them money for food.

My father spent his free time helping people in the community who needed him My parents worked all the time because they had been raised in poverty and they wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be.

They stood by me even when I was causing big trouble because I could not bear to silently witness injustice.

As a senior in high school, I was the editor of the paper and excoriated a group of teachers and students for their blatant classism in a long controversial editorial that ended with me being physically attacked by a teacher This was my first lesson in the power of the written word and the ability to change things My aunt said, By God, if you're making people mad, then you're doing something right.

I grew up across from the foot of a ridge with pine trees and tulip poplars gathered around a creek, lined with mossy rocks.

There was a steep hill, perfect for sledding, swaying grass where my best friend Donna, who is here tonight.

I love you Donna and I often watched the clouds and, had existential conversations.

At the age of ten, it was a wild place.

Then one day, bulldozers converged and.

For the next couple of years, it was an open wound.

As grandson of a coal miner and a family that had risen up due to the mines for the first time, I had a deep understanding of paradox and complexity.

But most of all, I saw the injustice at hand in the way our commons air, land water were polluted.

That strip mine stood up little fire in me that never has gone out and writing has been my greatest outlet for naming injustice.

Now I believe we're up the worst injustice of my lifetime.

Fascism is moving across the world and the eye of it is posed over the United States.

One of the reasons this is happening is because there is less empathy in our country than there used to be.

There is less empathy, partly because fewer people read.

Cruelty is celebrated and laughed about.

Arrogance is rewarded instead of ostracized at the highest powers Art is negated and tenderness certainly is.

We are living under a regime that never speaks of love.

It does not truck in beauty.

I believe art and especially literature, can fight fascism and cruelty and hard heartedness.

I know that it can change people's minds and hearts because it changed mine.

When I read The Color Purple in the ninth grade, My heart and mind were cracked open.

Other books have been life changing too.

Fair and Tender Ladies Gilead, Beloved, The Doll Maker.

A prayer For Owen Meany, Jude the Obscure.

My Antonia, Jona█s Gourd Vine, Chamber Crowe.

There are others and there are also films, paintings, plays Songs.

So many songs.

I believe that art can change the world.

I believe that art makes us more empathetic, and that's why we all have to fight for it.

Some of us, by continuing to create it, but all of us in refusing to allow it to be negated by legislators or the larger culture, whether it be the art contained in banned books or the art of drag.

We are living in a time when people are being put on lists because of how they identify.

The time when poets and nurses are being murdered in the streets for protesting.

We must stand up for them by making art and speaking up no matter the cost.

But most of all, by holding on to love and empathy.

Some of my favorite lines I have written are in a poem called A River, and I want to aim for the close by reading Just one short passage from that poem, and I'm reading it for anyone who has felt negated or belittled or targeted in this er of cruelty.

The lines go, you know yourself, so only be yourself and do not fret for if more could be like you They might be free themselves.

As a writer, I want to create more empathy.

I want to conjure hope, to put more tenderness and love into the world, even while naming its evils and ugliness, and to always fight back, to name evil and to speak out against atrocity.

Sometimes love requires that I speak out because I love my country.

I speak out because I love my state.

I write because I want to change the world, even if it's the heart of only one reader.

And I believe that if we do all these things with love as the propellant our fight is just.

Thank you.

They are great examples of why Kentucky writers are some of the best in the nation.

If not the world.

Thank you all for being here and have a wonderful rest of your evening.