The annual Kentucky Book Festival returns to Lexington this November and Transylvania professor Jeremy Paden is one of four authors helping kick off the event.
Kentucky Humanities will open the Kentucky Book Festival with New Kentucky Poetry and Prose. The event takes place on Monday, Nov. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning in downtown Lexington. Paden, a poet and Spanish professor, will join novelists Willie Davis and Robert Gipe and poet Maureen Morehead at the event.
“I am humbled that the council would ask me to participate in this event. I consider the fact that the Kentucky Humanities Council asked me to read with writers like Gipe, Morehead and Davis to be a kindness that I don’t merit. But, I am very grateful for it nonetheless,” Paden said.
Paden is an Affrilachian poet and the author of three chapbooks. His poems and translations have appeared in Adirondack Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat and Louisville Review to name a few. He is a recipient of the Al Smith Individual Artist Award.
The new poetry collection by Paden, “prison recipes,” takes the reader into the lives of the prisoners of political oppression in Argentina and Chile, describing the means by which both bodies and souls are sustained in the face of brutality.
“The arts have always needed sponsors and patrons,” Paden said. “Writers have often been secretaries and diplomats that have served at the pleasure of dukes and kings. We are fortunate to have independent, nonprofit entities like the Kentucky Humanities Council that find ways to promote and sponsor the arts.”
New Kentucky Poetry and Prose is one of many Kentucky Book Festival events taking place Nov. 12–17. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets or RSVP are necessary to attend. Books will be available for purchase, and authors will sign them following the readings.
Go here for more information on the Festival, including a full list of sponsors, events and authors.