Kentucky Historical Society
Enjoy An Evening with the Authors at KHS

Enjoy An Evening with the Authors at KHS

Silas House, Jason Howard and Erik Reece to present at Thursday evening program

FRANKFORT, Ky. (May 3, 2010)—Sip wine and enjoy light appetizers and meet authors Silas House, Jason Howard and Erik Reece as they read and discuss their works on mountaintop removal mining. “An Evening with the Authors” will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 27 at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in downtown Frankfort.

House and Howard will read from “Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal.” The Appalachia natives avoided formulaic activist rhetoric in favor of moving personal accounts of the human costs of mountaintop removal mining. After a detailed account of the history and effects of mountaintop removal, “Something’s Rising” presents oral histories from 12 Appalachian opponents of mountaintop removal. The informants include famous musicians Kathy Mattea and Jean Ritchie, Goldman Prize winning activist Judy Bonds and West Virginia author Denise Giardina. 

During “An Evening with the Authors,” Reece will read from and discuss “Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia.” In the powerful call-to-arms, Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction.

House is the author of the four novels, “Clay’s Quilt,” “A Parchment of Leaves,” “The Coal Tattoo” and “Eli the Good;” and two plays, “The Hurting Part” and “Long Time Travelling.” He is a two-time finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize, a two-time winner of the Kentucky Novel of the Year and the recipient of the Appalachian Writer of the Year, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Chaffin Prize for Literature and the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowships of Southern Writers, among others.

Howard is the editor of “We All Live Downstream: Writing About Mountaintop Removal” and former senior editor and staff writer for Equal Justice magazine. His work has appeared in Paste, The Louisville Review, Appalachian Heritage, New Southerner, Kentucky Living and many other publications.

Writer in residence at the University of Kentucky, Reece is the author of “An American Gospel” and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Nation, Orion and The Oxford American, among other publications. For “Lost Mountain,” Reece received the Sierra Club’s David R. Brower award for environmental journalism and the Columbia University Journalism School John B. Oakes Award for environmental writing.

Tickets to “An Evening with the Authors” are $10 for KHS members and $15 for the general public. Reservations are required by May 24. Contact Julia Curry at 502-564-1792, ext. 4414 or Julia.Curry@ky.gov. 

This program is part of a larger series of Thursday evening programming at KHS.  Other Thursday evening events at the KHS history campus include a film series featuring Appalshop productions, behind-the-scenes tours and a concert by No Tools Loaned on June 24. Visit www.history.ky.gov and click News and Events for up-to-date information on other KHS events and programs.

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An agency of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Kentucky Historical Society, established in 1836, is committed to helping people understand, cherish and share Kentucky's history. The KHS history campus includes The Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History, Old State Capitol and Kentucky Military History Museum at the Old State Arsenal.  For more information about the Kentucky Historical Society and its programs, visit the website at www.history.ky.gov.