Bob Morgan is one of the most distinguished authors to come from Appalachia in this era. The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed one of their Academy Awards in Literature upon him in 2007. He is a stimulating conservationist, and when he talks with the publisher of this book, Jonathan Greene, it is positively scintillating. Morgan’s life was transformed when a bookmobile started coming to a church within walking distance of the Green River Valley farm in North Carolina where he grew up in a family without a car. He graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and then studied under Fred Chapell to receive his MFA from UNC-Greensboro. In 1969 the first of his sixteen poetry collections, Zirconia Poems, was published. He began teaching at Cornell University in 1971. After twenty years of publishing only poetry, in 1989 the first of his three story collections, The Blue Valleys, was released. Ten years later, in 1999, the first of his six novels, Gap Creek appeared.. It was an Oprah Book Club selection and a New York Times best-seller. In 2007 his first of two nonfiction books. Boone, appeared.
Frankfort: Gnomon Press, 1979. 56 pages. Trade paperback.