Past Inductees

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.