Norman's novella-length folktale tells the story of resistance among the folks against an evil King. Using the Appalachian region as a model, the tale describes a mythic hill domain that has been exploited by the forces of a colonizing empire. The hero Jack, familiar from the Jack tale tradition, is the fugitive leader of the people's revolt and the nemesis of the King. Wounded survivors of the revolution find solace and healing on Ancient Creek where old Aunt Haze is the guiding spirit.
 Told in mock-heroic language, Ancient Creek employs satire, comic irony, regional speech and the voice of a storyteller as it moves toward its hopeful conclusion. "Ancient Creek is an idea as well as a physical place in the Hill Domain that has not been spoiled by humans," says Norman. "It is so pure, so far back in the mountains, it does not appear on the King s maps. Ancient Creek refers to the old stream. It's an actual stream but also a river of words, a stream of consciousness that bears the old legends and lore and the old wisdom. There are forces in the world that want to destroy that river, to destroy all native and natural life, bring it under control for whatever profit that may be in it. That is what the resistance is about."
 First recorded as a spoken-word album by Appalshop in 1975, Ancient Creek appears in book form for the first time in this Old Cove Press edition. In addition to Norman s original tale, the book includes essays about the story by Annalucia Accardo, Dee Davis, Kevin I. Eyster and Jim Wayne Miller. A digitally remastered CD of the 1975 reading is being published concurrently with the book by June Appal Recordings, a division of Appalshop. The book and CD feature cover art by noted Kentucky artist Pam Oldfield Meade, who painted her vision of Ancient Creek.

Ancient Creek: A Folktale

Literature & Fiction

Norman, Gurney

United States

Old Cove Press

In this richly imagined collection of poems, Frank X Walker brings to life the mind and heart of legendary African-American jockey Isaac Burns Murphy (1861-1896). The son of a slave, Murphy rose to the top of thoroughbred racing in a brilliant career that brought him wealth, honor and international fame. The first to win the Kentucky Derby three times (1884, 1890, 1891), Murphy won an unprecedented 44% of the races he entered. Part of the lore surrounding Murphy's legacy was his penchant for not using the whip. He preferred to ride his mounts into the winner's circle by using his well-honed skills and simply talking to his horses.
 Through poetic imagination and historical research, Walker creates a unique literary portrait of Murphy. The poems are written in the voices of Murphy and his wife Lucy, his mentor African-American trainer Eli Jordan, and his parents James and America Burns. Their words follow Murphy's childhood years in Lexington, Kentucky, his rise to become America's most famous jockey, his encounters with racial violence in the post-Civil War South, and his early death at age thirty-five.
 In Murphy's time, thoroughbred racing was dominated by African-American jockeys. In the first Kentucky Derby, thirteen of the fifteen jockeys were black. Of the first twenty-eight runnings of the Derby (1875-1902), fifteen were won by African-American riders. As the century ended, black jockeys began to disappear from racing, an exodus that continued throughout the twentieth century. I Dedicate This Ride helps bring this important history to light.
 "I hope the knowledge of thoroughbred racing's original legacy can be returned to the African-American community and to all of us," says Walker. "I hope the book adds to the growing appreciation of Isaac Murphy as one of Kentucky's and the nation's greatest African-American figures. At the height of his career, Isaac was as famous as Jack Johnson, as fast as Jesse Owens, as dignified as Jackie Robinson and as admired as Michael Jordan. In Kentucky, he is to Lexington what Muhammad Ali is to Louisville."
 The poems imagined/spoken here by Isaac and Lucy Murphy, Eli Jordan, and James and America Burns tell Murphy's compelling life story. They shine a light on the life of America's most celebrated black jockey, his family and community, and the historical canvas on which his extraordinary life played out.

Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride

Walker, Frank X.

Reference

Night Garden is the story of a teenage girl in Appalachia confronting an explosive mix of addiction, grief, and sexuality. Shattered by a family tragedy, seventeen-year-old Marie Massey runs away from her affluent parents in a small Kentucky college town to live with an older man and his criminal family in a neighboring county. Her new life is both threatening and thrilling, a nine-month journey into a criminal underworld that takes her from youthful innocence to dark levels of human experience. Her encounter with the handsome, charismatic, thirty-year-old Bobo Owens sets in motion the central story of the novel. In a deceptively subdued, almost dreamlike voice, the author draws the reader into the fast-moving, suspenseful plot. The novel unfolds in a sequence of vivid scenes, each of which is its own immediate story, carried by the author's taut, measured prose.

Night Garden: A Novel

Mullins, Carrie

Genre Fiction

Poetry. OUT OF NOWHERE is the first comprehensive collection of poetry by Kentucky writer Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, presenting sixty-six new poems and work from two previous letterpress collections. Selected and arranged by the author, the poems in OUT OF NOWHERE unfold as a luminous narrative of the poet's life, moving through seasons of experience—from the first stirrings of childhood consciousness to present-day meditations on loss and grief—with candor, clarity, and startling tenderness. She opens to the reader the intimate landscape of her life in rural Kentucky, which she connects directly to the immensities and astonishing mysteries of the universe that come smashing through even our most ordinary days. "The subject here is daily life and its uncommon richness.... The starkly resonant moment discovered in these poems suddenly appears to be at one with common sense and practicality, grounded in the here and now. And yet the poems in this deep and enlarging book always defy that superficial description—because that is what this book is about, a sweet, abiding defiance. All things refuse to be merely what they seem at first notice; all things have an after life, an inner-life, a beyond-life. Beauty, at first, is no big deal, and is then accepted; spiritual and temporal transcendence are no large claims on this reality. And yet, love in its various forms comes along, to move the poet and the entire world around her from happiness through grief, and on to further love and further wisdom. This is a book of gorgeous poetry that reaches always beyond itself, and leaves one with the feeling that always reaching farther is what we are supposed to do. And so, along with great beauty and true art, in this book we also have an invitation."—Maurice Manning "I never get tired of being inside the mind of Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, never knowing what will turn up next in this poet's keen and tender seeing of the world—creature or spirit, a kind of radiance suffusing everything. Each of these poems is so alive, so unexpected, so uncontrived, so beautiful and true in the rarest, most startling way. I could dwell here forever."—Cecelia Woloch "Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is a lyrical cosmonaut, an explorer into the mystery of time, space and consciousness. Who are we and what is all this that comes out of nowhere? Beholding this mystery with sheer wonder, she zigzags between the out–there and the right-here. These poems form a breathtaking, exhilarating narrative, a journey through a particular life in the context of the infinite. She can touch base with the universe and then zoom in on a bird feather or a yellow leaf. We are jolted by her perceptions, surprised by what we hadn't noticed, but she was up at dawn, noticing—noticing everything, in detail, and bringing the fresh news to us. OUT OF NOWHERE is nothing less than genius."—Bobbie Ann Mason

Out of Nowhere: New and Selected Poems

Taylor-Hall, Mary Ann

Poetry

<div> This historical and inspiring coming-of-age novel for young readers explores topics of both historical and contemporary relevance as it follows a harrowing year in the life of its intrepid teenaged narrator. Lexington, Kentucky, 1833: Calendula "Cal" Farmer, a thirteen-year-old white girl, has been raised by her abolitionist, freethinking mother to reason for herself, consult her inner wisdom, and come to her own conclusions. But when a flash flood devastates her family's home, Cal is unexpectedly thrust into domestic service in a wealthy family's mansion. There, she encounters firsthand the physical, intellectual, and emotional brutalities of slavery. Later, a cholera outbreak kills a quarter of the population, including Cal's mother, and Cal enters an orphanage, where she bravely begins another chapter in her young life. Cal's story is sure to captivate readers as she confronts the injustices and uncertainties of racism, class consciousness, epidemic disease, and personal loss with independent thinking, perseverance, and love. </div>

The Freethinker’s Daughter: A Novel

Children's Books

O'Neill, Jenny