By Will Wright

McAfee Knob in Virginia, Mount Katahdin, Maine, and the Grayson Highlands of Virginia are three of the multiple landmarks Wright encountered along the Appalachian Trail.

The driveway that leads from Route 15 to Riverside Park in Whitesburg is easy to miss.

It peels off from the main road and leads down to a gravel parking lot cozied up along the bank of the North Fork Kentucky River.

On a Sunday afternoon last fall, Patty Amburgey stood here and thought about her husband.

His name is one of dozens etched on a black memorial stone erected in October to honor coal miners who worked in the surrounding mountains and died of black lung disease.

Like many other widows in Eastern Kentucky, Amburgey spent the last years of her husband’s life caring for him as the disease took its toll.

Crawford Lee

By Brianna Stanley

This year marks two firsts in the Appalachian Studies Association conference’s 43-year history — the first time it’s being held at UK and the first time it’s had a main focus on the forests of the region.

The theme of this year’s ASA conference, “Appalachian Understories: Growing Hope and Resilience from Commonwealth to Global Commons,” refers not only to the understory of the forest ecologically speaking, but also to the stories of beauty, cultural pride and growth in Appalachia that are so often overshadowed by derogatory stereotypes.

Isabel Jenkins

Within a forest context, an “understory” is the biodiverse plant, animal, and fungus life that exists below the tree canopy, often growing partially in shadow. It’s the overlooked nutrient-rich leaf litter, the mosses and acorns and soils, the seedlings striving

Census workers will only visit residences in person if the household does not respond to repeated mailings. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau

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By Dan Radmacher

Census workers will only visit residences in person if the household does not respond to repeated mailings. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau

Money and power.

Those are the stakes for residents of Appalachia as the U.S. Census Bureau conducts the 2020 decennial census — which will help determine how roughly $1 trillion in federal funding is distributed over the next 10 years as well as which states lose congressional representatives and which gain them.

“The Census count guides federal funding for more than 300 programs,” says Kelly Allen, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy’s director of policy engagement. Those programs include

By Sarah Michels

In the days before Spring Break, UK’s campus usually goes silent, a ghost town somewhat reminiscent of a post-zombie apocalyptic society.

But not this year.

From Thursday, March 12, to Sunday, March 15, hundreds of students and faculty, from UK and other nearby universities, will spend the last days before their mid-semester vacation celebrating everything Appalachia.

For the first time ever, UK’s College of Arts and Sciences is hosting the Annual Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) Conference in Lexington. The four-day event, in its 43rd year, is a combination of scholarly and activist activity, community engagement, music, crafts and more, said Jennifer Cramer, the program chair for the ASA Conference.

“Technically UK is not in Appalachia, but as one of our colleagues likes to say, ‘Lexington

By Katie Grace

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 19, 2020) – A new book of essays by young Kentucky students seeks to inform, inspire, motivate and uplift the reader through personal cancer stories and cancer prevention initiatives.    

The book, “The Cancer Crisis in Appalachia: Kentucky Students Take ACTION,” contains essays by 20 high school and five undergraduate students who are participants in the Appalachian Career Training in Oncology (ACTION) Program at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center.

The state of Kentucky

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

In just a few weeks, the University of Kentucky will welcome students, scholars and activists to campus for the 43rd annual Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) conference March 12-15. Themed "Appalachian Understories," the conference will emphasize the often obscured voices of the region, including black Appalachians.

Jillean McCommons, a doctoral student in the UK College of Arts and Sciences' Department of History, studies black Appalachian history and is serving as an organizer for the upcoming conference. One of the conference's four plenaries, "Black

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 7, 2020) — Next month, the University of Kentucky will host, for the first time, the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) conference on its campus. 

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

 

Gurney Norman is a professor of English and scholar-in-residence at the UK Appalachian Center. Photo courtesy of Morris Grubbs.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 24, 2020) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is pleased to announce that its scholar-in-residence, Gurney Norman, will continue his "Conversations with Gurney" speaker series this spring. The series features premier authors from the Appalachian region.

The series will kick off 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 27, with Willie Davis, author of the novel "Nightwolf." The event will take

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

Some of the UK Appalachian Center's 2019 award recipients. Applications for the 2020 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and for the 2020 UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award are both due Feb. 17.

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is currently offering awards and funding opportunities for students and faculty involved with work and research in the Appalachian region.

Applications for the 2020 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and applications for the 2020 

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

Next week, the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center will host UK's annual Water Week, a student-led series of events designed to bring awareness to water-related issues in Eastern Kentucky and beyond. The events will showcase issues relating to ecology, infrastructure and bottled water, and highlight organizations working on water-related issues.

Madison Mooney, a graduate student in the UK College of Social Work and intern for the Appalachian Center (based in UK's College of Arts and Sciences), is helping organize this year's event. She has worked firsthand in her hometown in Martin County, Kentucky, where

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

Gurney Norman (left) featured author Robert Gipe last semester as part of the UK Appalachian Center's "Conversations with Gurney" speaker series. Photo courtesy of Morris Grubbs.

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is pleased to announce that its scholar-in-residence, Gurney Norman, will continue his "Conversations with Gurney" speaker series this semester. The series features premier authors from the Appalachian region.

The series will kick off at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 23, with former Kentucky Poet Laureate George Ella Lyon. The event will take place in the John Jacob Niles Gallery in the Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center on

By Madison Brown

Proposals and award nominations for the 2020 Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) conference are now open through Oct. 7. The conference will take place March 12-15, 2020, on the University of Kentucky campus.

The 2020 program committee openly invites proposals for panels, papers, posters, performances, roundtables or workshops. Proposals will be judged by whether they discuss a relevant topic and current approach for the Appalachian region, the clarity of their proposal and whether it contributes to providing a multiplicity of perspectives and content.  All proposal submissions require an abstract or summary, participant contact information, a notice of any special requirements and a short biography for each participant. All proposals must be submitted online through the ASA

By Beth Bowling

The University of Kentucky Center of Excellence in Rural Health (CERH) has released the agenda for the fifth annual Appalachian Research Day: Come Sit on the Porch.  The one-day event, which shares results of health research conducted with communities in Appalachia, will be held Wednesday, Sept. 18 at the First Federal Center in Hazard. Registration for the event closes on Sept. 12. 

UK researchers work closely with communities throughout Appalachia to learn more about health issues and improve wellbeing. Appalachian Research Day is an opportunity to highlight community-based research that begins at the local level and builds upon relationships between people, neighborhoods and groups who have common interests and concerns.

Highlights of this year’s conference include:

By Whitney Hale

Watch Stephanie Jeter and Andy Duckworth, two members of The High Tops, perform "Red Headed Stranger."

The popular "Appalachia in the Bluegrass"concert series will return to University of Kentucky's campus this fall. The series showcasing the music of Appalachia will open Sept. 6 with a performance by The High Tops.

Concerts presented as part of “Appalachia in the Bluegrass” are free and open to the public and begin weekly at noon on Fridays, in the Niles Gallery of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, located at UK's Lucille C. Little

By Jenny Wells

Students and faculty affiliated with the University of Kentucky’s Appalachian Center, College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate Appalachian Research Community (GARC) are partnering with the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) to host its 43rd annual conference March 12-15, 2020, on the UK campus.

The conference, titled “Appalachian Understories: Growing Hope and Resilience from Commonwealth to Global Commons,” will engage in conversations about Appalachian forests, black Appalachians, women, gender and sexuality, health and healing, and hope spots. Oral history, film-

By Kara Richardson

Scholars based at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health recently launched a new, open-access, online publication — the Journal of Appalachian Health (JAH) — to highlight research focused on the health of people living in Appalachia. In collaboration with UK Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, and with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and partner institutions across Appalachia, the founding editors took the first issue live in the spring of 2019. 

“I am delighted to have worked with

Aaron Guest, a PhD candidate in Gerontology, recently spoke to Dr. Greg Davis for the WUKY radio show "On Medicine". 

"One of the ongoing medical challenges in our state is delivering quality care for patients who don’t live anywhere near a major metropolitan area of the commonwealth," Davis said. "Now imagine if you’re LGBTQ in a rural county and need to find a doctor or pharmacist.  What sort of barriers might you face?"

The interview with Guest is part of WUKY's recognition of Pride month as well as Elder Abuse Awareness month. 

By Guy Ramsey

University of Kentucky Athletics is partnering with the UK Mountain Cats and the Appalachian Center on UK’s campus to begin yearly service excursions to Eastern Kentucky.

Twenty-five student-athletes and staff members will participate in the inaugural trip, traveling to Harlan, Kentucky, June 21-23 for a three-day, two-night service experience unlike any before. This special group will be embarking on service opportunities, working directly with nonprofit organizations in the Harlan area. This inaugural trip is designed to reach out to an often underserved region of Kentucky, as well as to provide educational opportunities to student-athletes and staff about this particular region of Kentucky.

“We are so excited to connect with the people of the state of Kentucky,” Associate Athletics Director for Life Performance Stephanie Simmons said. “To have

By Lori Adams

The University of Kentucky has released its Dean's List for the spring 2019 semester. A total of 6,562 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance. 

To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade-point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes. Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.

The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting: www.uky.edu/PR/News/DeansList/.

The University of Kentucky is increasingly the first choice for students, faculty and staff to pursue their passions and their professional goals. In the last two years, Forbes has named UK among the best employers for diversity and

By Jenny Wells

Award recipients, left to right: Madeline Dunfee, Katherine Love, Anna Branduzzi and Carson Benn. Photo courtesy of the UK Appalachian Center

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Centerhonored nine students last week with its annual research awards. Four graduate students received the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, and four graduate students and one undergraduate student received the center's Eller and Billings Student Research Award. 

"This summer, the James S. Brown and Eller/Billings Awards will sponsor students from seven different departments across four colleges," said Kathryn Engle, associate director of the Appalachian Center. "Innovative research across disciplines is thriving in the region, and the Appalachian Center is