Creative Juices

Melva Sue Priddy ’96 ED

has written “The Tillable Land,” a collection of poetry. It is easy to love a land that loves you back and offers its rewards freely. But Appalachian soil isn’t the forthcoming kind. As seen through the collection, it requires constant vigilance and care. But these poems cover more than just the land, they also offer a portrait of a complicated family life. The collection offers not only a glimpse into the life of an Appalachian farmstead, but the feminine experience in such a setting.

Kevin Cook

’84 EN has written “House of Champions: The Story of Kentucky Basketball Home Courts.” Cook combines research and interviews with players and coaches to reveal the rich history and colorful details of the structures that have hosted University of Kentucky basketball. Fascinating backstories are uncovered, including the excitement of Alumni Gym’s opening night in 1925, the problematic acquisition of Black community land for the building of Memorial Coliseum and the painstaking inscription of nearly 10,000 names of Kentucky’s World War II and Korean War heroes to be displayed along the Coliseum’s pedestrian ramps. Duane S. Nickell ’83 AS has written “Scientific Kentucky,” a glimpse into the lives of 17 scientific heroes from Kentucky. Biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan laid the foundation for modern genetics. Chemist William Lipscomb made important discoveries about the structure of molecules and chemical bonding. Astrophysicist J. Richard Gott is a leading expert on cosmology, general relativity and time travel. And inventor George Devol built the world’s first programmable industrial robot.

Ashley Belote ’18 FA has published “A Partridge in the We Tree,” a follow up to “The Me Tree.” The children’s book “The Me Tree” tells the tale of a bear who learned to happily share his space. In this festive follow up, Christmas visitors quickly put the bear’s patience and hospitality to the test. Designed to engage early readers, this story combines charming characters with simple text, lively illustrations and laugh-out-loud humor to help boost kids’ confidence and create lifelong readers.

James Baker Hall ’57 AS has published “The Missing Body of the Fox” posthumously. The book is a memoir about his search of the mother he lost to suicide when he was 8 years old. Working his way through a memory shattered by trauma, the late Kentucky Poet Laureate tries to recover the story of his beloved mother Lurlene Bronaugh and the long consequences of her death for his childhood self and the man he becomes. In what author Erik Reece calls “genuine, probing, and courageous” language, Hall seeks out a story that was shuttered in silence and shame.

Wendell Berry ’56 ’57 AS, ’86 HON has published “The Need to be Whole Patriotism and the History of Prejudice.” Following on his groundbreaking “The Hidden Wound” (1970), and “The Unsettling of America” (1977), Berry continues to explore the themes of racial division and the destruction of land-based communities. He finds our country fraught with destruction and disorder. Seeing a divided nation and our commonwealth threatened, Berry offers a conversation of hope with thoughts on a better way forward.

Michael K. Cundall ’96 AS has written “The Humor Hack: Using Humor to Feel Better, Increase Resilience and (Yes) Enjoy Your Work.” This playbook is filled with anecdotes, exercises and discussion of topics that will provide readers a way to understand how humor works and how they can take this knowledge and enrich their personal and professional lives with more laughs, enjoyment and mirth. The book’s content is based in research, but not academic in tone or format, and is accessible to the general reader.

UK and the UK Alumni Association do not necessarily endorse books or other original material mentioned in Creative Juices. The University of Kentucky and the UK Alumni Association are not responsible for the content, views and opinions expressed on websites mentioned in Creative Juices or found via links off of those websites.