Kirk Judd & Edwina Pendarvis Author Reading & Book Signing

Kirk Judd, founding member of West Virginia Writers, Inc., has lived, worked, trout fished and wandered around in West Virginia all his life. Kirk was a member of the Appalachian Literary League, a former president (and JUG recipient) of West Virginia Writers, Inc., and is a founding member of and creative writing instructor for Allegheny Echoes, Inc., dedicated to the support and preservation of WV cultural heritage arts. Author of 3 collections of poetry “Field of Vision” 1986, “Tao-Billy” 1996, and “My People Was Music” 2014, and a co-editor of the widely acclaimed anthology, “Wild, Sweet Notes – 50 Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950 – 1999”, he is widely published. He has been featured three times on American Public Radio on “The Poet and The Poem” with WV native Grace Cavalieri and has appeared on the acclaimed public radio show Mountain Stage. Kirk was honored to be one of 5 readers selected for the installation ceremony of Louise McNeill Pease as WV Poet Laureate in 1979. He is internationally known for his performance work combining poetry and old time music and has performed poetry in Ireland and across West Virginia at fairs, concerts, and festivals since the 1970s.

Edwina (Eddy) Pendarvis has authored, co-authored, and edited collections of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, most of them focusing on Appalachia. She was named a Distinguished Fellow of Marshall University’s John Deaver Drinko Academy from 2001 to 2002. She has won many awards for her work, served on the Board of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, and received the Pearl S. Buck Award in 2013. She wrote a series of biographies of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 2015, her poetry collection Ghost Dance Poems was published by Blair Mountain Press. In her recent creative nonfiction book, Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia, published in 2023 by the Jesse Stuart Foundation, she finds connections between dance and other forms of physical prowess, such as martial arts. Her reading will include brief excerpts from the “ballet” book and from Ghost Dance Poems. Born in eastern Kentucky, she spent her childhood there and in southern West Virginia. She is professor emeritus at Marshall University and lives in Huntington