Frank X Walker was born in Danville, Kentucky, and grew up in the “projects.” He attended the University of Kentucky for his undergraduate degree and Spaulding University for his MFA degree. He was appointed the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate in 2013, and is today Professor of Poetry at the University of Kentucky. Walker is recipient of the Appalachian Heirtage Writer’s Award, NAACP Image Award, the Lillian Smith Book Award for The Journey of York (2004), and the Kentucky Public Librarians Choice Award nomination for Affrilachia (2000). He received the Lannan Fellowship for Poetry in 2005 and the Al Smith Fellowship in 2006, as well as the Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence. Walker is founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and founding editor and publisher of PLUCK; he coined the word Affrilachia, and much of his work is devoted to discovering or exploring lost Affrilachian and African American heroes: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2013), Isaac Murphy (2010), When Winter Come (2008), Black Box (2005), About Flight (2015), Masked Man Black, Pandemic and Protest Poems (2020), among other volumes.
Adam Booth is an award-winning storyteller and adjunct professor in the Appalachian Studies Program at Shepherd, teaching storytelling and traditional music. Booth holds an M.M. degree from Case Western Reserve University in Music History, graduating magna cum laude. Adam Booth’s original stories blend traditional mountain folklore, music, and an awareness of contemporary Appalachia. He has been featured at the International Storytelling Center, the National Storytelling Festival, the Appalachian Studies Association Conference, the National Storytelling Conference, and has been a Spoken Word Resident at the Banff Centre. His recordings have received two Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, two Parents’ Choice Silver Honors, and four Storytelling World Awards and Honors. He is a four-time champion of the West Virginia Liars’ Contest. Booth is founder and coordinator for the acclaimed Speak Storytelling Series, a nationally and internationally recognized program of storyteller and part of the Appalachian Studies Program at Shepherd University.
Rachael Meads is teacher, administrator, and an Appalachian scholar, who teaches the Appalachian Culture courses at Shepherd University. She also serves as the Performing Arts Director at Shepherd (PASS) and Director of the Appalachian Heritage Festival. Rachael is a long-time enthusiast for the region, and she is dedicated to preserving Appalachian culture and traditions, as well as a being a proponent of environmental responsibility, and she is an opponent of mountaintop removal and other harmful forms of extraction. Meads received her graduate degree at WVU in Appalachian Studies and has worked with some of the country’s most significant Appalachian musicians in her position as PASS Director. She served in 2016 as the Program Chair of the International Appalachian Studies Association Conference held at Shepherd University, and was recipient of the Stephen Fisher Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020.
Dr. Benjamin Bankhurst, Alternate NEH Misty Mountains Institute Director, received his B.A. degree from the University of New Mexico and his Masters and Ph.D. from Kings College, University of London. Dr. Bankhurst’s research focuses on migration to the Appalachian frontier in the colonial and revolutionary periods. Before Joining the Department of History at Shepherd, Dr. Bankhurst held teaching and research appointments at the London School of Economics; the Institute of Historical Research; and Queen Mary, University of London. His articles have appeared in the Pennsylvania Magazine for History and Biography, The Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, and Eire/Ireland. The American Council for Irish Studies awarded his first book Ulster Presbyterians and the Scots Irish Diaspora, 1750-1763 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) the Donald Murphy Prize. Bankhurst sits on the Board of the Shepherd University Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities and is a primary player in programing for the Center.
Dr. James Broomall is Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. Along with William A. Link, Dr. Broomall co-edited and published Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He has articles in Civil War History, The Journal of the Civil War Era, and the edited volume, Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South in addition to historiographical essays, book reviews, and online essays. His latest book is Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers.
Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, Misty Mountains Teacher Institute Director, is Senior Managing Editor of Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Professor of English, and Director of the Shepherd University Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities. She was a public high school teacher for five years, Georgia STAR teacher, and served as Shepherd’s English Education Specialization Coordinator for twenty-five years. As an Appalachian, Shurbutt’s research interests, scholarship, and service are strongly tied to the region. She is creator of the Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence Project, which brings nationally and internationally recognized Appalachian writers to West Virginia, a program which provides the One Book One West Virginia common reading authors. Dr. Shurbutt has presented and published on a variety of Appalachian topics and writers, as well as on pedagogy and teaching. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Appalachian Studies, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, The North Carolina Review, Women’s Studies, Women and Language, Essays in Literature, The Southern Literary Journal, Encyclopedia of American Literature, and Scribner’s American Writers and World Writers series, among others. She has chapters in books including Feminism in Literature and Untying the Gender Knot (Greenwood Press), and she is author of books about writing and literature, including Reading Writing Relationships (Kendall Hunt) and a critical study of Silas House (UK Press, 2021). She was 2006 West Virginia Professor of the Year, 2015 Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) National President, and 2016 ASA Conference Chair (see CV).