Kirk Judd, co-editor of this anthology, helped found West Virginia Writers, Inc., and is the co-founder and co-director of Allegheny Echoes (with Sherrell Wigal and Mike Bing). A graduate of Marshall University, he has a strong dramatic reading style that has gained him wide recognition as a performance poet evoking, sometimes to musical accompaniment, the Appalachian experience. He has published two volumes of poetry, Field of Vision (Aegina Press) and Tao-Billy (Trillium Press). His work has appeared in regional publications such as BOGG, Then and Now, The Sow's Ear, Grab-a-Nickel, Down Home, Hill and Valley and the anthologies Down the River and Kestrel. He has been featured three times on National Public Radio's "The Poet and the Poem", hosted by Grace Cavalieri.
Barbara Smith, co-editor of this anthology, is a freelance writer and editor and former chair of the Division of the Humanities and Professor of Literature and Writing, Alderson-Broaddus College, Philippi, West Virginia. She has published over 200 poems, stories, and journal articles in, among other places, Antietam Review, Potomac Review, Tar River Poetry, English Journal and Goldenseal. She has also published one novel and seven books of nonfiction. Most recently she was a contributing editor for the poetry anthologies Weeping with Those Who Weep and Coming Together.
