Chris Green lives in Huntington, West Virginia, where he teaches, writes
about, and crusades for Appalachian literature and social justice at Marshall
University. He is co-editor of Coal: A Poetry Anthology, has most recently authored
The Social Life of Poetry: Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism, and is working a
history of Appalachian literature. He was born and raised in Lexington, a city of some 300,000 in central Kentucky. �When I was a high school senior, I asked the AP English teacher, �Why don�t we read anyone from Kentucky?� She leaned over her podium and
proclaimed, �There are no great writers from Kentucky.� Thus, I began my quest
to discover Kentucky and meet other writers.�
During his undergraduate days at the University of Kentucky, the author
studied creative writing and Appalachian studies and learned the power of literature
to awaken people�s awareness and help them see their power to change the world.
He witnessed this first hand with mentor Gurney Norman who directed him to
the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative and so wrote the history of their
journal, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel.
During the 1990s his quest then took him to the mountains in Boone,
North Carolina, on to Bloomington, Indiana, and (after marriage) to Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. �All the while, I sought to understand how poetry lived in the
world and the world lived in poetry.� He taught poetry writing to college students,
to elders in community centers, to special education students in rural Indiana, to
kids in juvenile correctional facilities, and to poets in the community. Along the
way, he staged community readings and celebrations of the world and the word.
In 1999, he returned to Lexington, Kentucky, where he took over editorship of Wind and taught as a poet-in-the-schools around the state. He also became a father, did his PhD, and rediscovered his connection to the mountains. �My passions for poetry, people, justice, and community are now united in my work at Marshall University, where I help students to tell their stories, and thus touch, value, and fight for their worlds.�
