An Evening With the Mountain Keepers

The University of Kentucky Writing Program
Community Engagement Series
Proudly Presents



Thursday, April 9, 2009 from 6 - 10 pm
UK Student Center Grand Ballroom
Free and open to the public

The Evening celebrates the way that public writing and grassroots community action work together to ensure a healthy, participatory democracy. Learn about Appalachia's endangered culture and its uneasy relationship with coal, and experience how journalists, poets, speakers, artists, and musicians use creative activism to make their voices heard.

Take a look at the Beehive Collective's incredible new work of art The True Cost of Coal and talk with the artists who created it, see Jeff Chapman-Crane's breathtaking sculpture The Agony of Gaia, visit with our community partners about their unique coal-culture exhibits, browse art and culture displays, watch MTR visuals, listen to activist music from Public Outcry and others, and enjoy refreshments.

7-9—Program

MC Erik Reece begins the program with a brief reading from Lost Mountain and a discussion of the way that public writing and grassroots community action work together to safeguard the participatory democratic nation our Founders designed. He highlights the way in which engaged citizen-writers have worked for decades to make disturbing environmental and social justice issues visible to the public eye

Frank X Walker offers an introduction to Appalachia's endangered culture and performs his new poem—a reflection on a photograph of WV coal miners.

Judy Sizemore reads The Badlands of Kentucky

Dave Cooper gives a geographic and ecological overview of MTR

George Ella Lyon reads original poetry

Silas House and Jason Howard read from Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting MTR

Public Outcry! plays original acoustic MTR music.. meet Silas House, Jason Howard, Jessie Lynn Keltner, Kate Larken, George Ella Lyon & Anne Shelby

Anne Shelby reads original poetry

Larry Gibson, the WV activist featured by CNN, Nightline, and People Magazine, shares his moving personal narratives on MTR and community

9p—Q&A and . . .

Audience Q&A discussion with presenters, talk with participants, peruse the art, culture, and information exhibits—and hear more MTR activist music.