![]() ![]() ![]() Gurney grew up in Hazard, Ketucky, which is only about an hour’s drive up the river toward Virginia from my hometown of Paintsville. (This is the point where you are supposed to feel sorry for the old feller) So I was not very good company when Gurney and I had lunch together one day and talked about growing up in Eastern Kentucky. ![]() Instead, I stayed in my room coughing so much I thought I would die. I was sicker than a dog with some terrible lung infection that made me cough so much that I had to turn down an invitation to sit at Edna O’Brien’s table at the conference banquet. Gurney was there to talk about his experience as a student of Frank O’Connor when he was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, while I was there to talk about O’Connor’s theory of the short story in his wonderful little book The Lonely Voice I have known Gurney’s work for years, but had never met him until last June when we both wound up as speakers at the International Short Story Conference in Cork. in lit from University of Kentucky, just sent me an email with the good news that Gurney Norman has been appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky. ![]() Jeff Birkenstein, one of my students from years back who got his Ph.D. ![]()
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