Past Honorees
Billy
C. Clark
Founder and Editor
Virginia Writing
2002 Founder
and editor of Virginia
Writing, and writer-in-residence at Longwood University, Mr. Clark is
a noted American author and one of Kentucky’s most distinguished writers.
He is an award-winning author of 11 books and numerous short stories and poems.
One book, A Long Row to Hoe, that has been used by a number of universities
across America as a study of Appalachia, was selected to TIME Magazine’s
Best Books of 1960, and by the Library of Congress to be recorded on talking
records for the blind. Trail of the Hunter’s Horn was selected as
a Crowell-Collier Classic and in 1964 was anthologizes in Platt and Monk’s
30 Greatest Dog Stories, along with Jack London’s Call of the
Wild and John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie. Song of
the River won the Friends of American Writers Award in 1957 as one of the
three best books published in the South and Southwest. The Champion of Sourwood
Mountain was offered by the Book-of-the-Month Club. His
short stories have appeared as Best American Short Stories and have been
anthologized in American literature books. Film rights for his novel, Goodbye
Kate, were bought by Walt Disney Studios. Numerous works of his have been
recorded on special tapes for the blind and sight-impaired by the Kentucky Department
of Libraries and printed in Braille for the blind by the Library of Congress. In
1992, a bridge spanning the Big Sandy River connecting Kentucky to West Virginia
on U.S. Route 60 was named the Billy C. Clark Bridge in his honor. In 1998, Mr.
Clark the recipient of the Appalachian Heritage Denny C. Plattner Award
for Poetry. A mural of his portrait was painted on the floodwall in his hometown
of Catlettsburg, Kentucky in 1999. Also in 1999, Mr. Clark was designated an Appalachian
Treasure by the Kentucky Folk Art Center at Morehead University. Mr.
Clark taught in the University of Kentucky system as writer-in-residence for 18
years, attaining the rank of full professor and has been writer-in-residence at
Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia since 1986. Since 1992, the Jesse Stuart
Foundation in Ashland, Kentucky has re-issued eight of Clark’s nine books
that were first published by G.P. Putnam’s and Thomas Y. Crowell. All of
Clark’s writings are to be kept in print in perpetuity at the Foundation.
A volume of Clark’s poetry, To Leave My Heart at Catlettsburg, was
released in 1999 by the Jesse Stuart Foundation. Also, prints
of a portrait of Mr. Clark from an original oil painting by noted Kentucky artist
Jim Marsh are available from the Foundation. A new novel, By Way of the Forked
Stick, was released in September 2000 by the University of Tennessee Press.
In July 1999, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky paid tribute to Mr. Clark. A
tour of Mr. Clark’s hometown of Catlettsburg, Kentucky was inaugurated in
2001. Among the points of interest on this tour are some of the sites that were
significant in Mr. Clark’s childhood and that have been frequently mentioned
in his writings. The tour also features a display of copies of some of his manuscripts,
and visitors to Catlettsburg can view a film of Mr. Clark touring his town and
talking about some of the locations that were significant in his earlier life. On
March 3, 2000, Mr. Clark became the first recipient of Longwood University’s
Presidential Distinguished Service Award for contributions made to Longwood University
and the high school teachers and students of Virginia as founder and editor of
Virginia Writing. Read his interview in AEP
ONLINE. | 
