Berea College  

In the opening convocation of the 2009 academic year, Dr. Larry Shinn addresses the student body. Preceding his talk is a production of "Berea Voices," quotes from Bereans past and present.

This is a replay of the Bluegrass Ensemble's 2009 spring concert.

Pamela Duncan, author of the novels Plant Life, Moon Women, and The Big Beautiful read on Friday, May 1, at a celebration of the spring 2009 issue of Appalachian Heritage, a literary quarterly published by Berea College from the Appalachian Center. Duncan is the featured author for this issue. “As anyone who has ever attended one of her readings can attest,” wrote acclaimed novelist Lee Smith in her article on Pam Duncan in the magazine, “she can be hilarious.” Pamela Duncan was born in Asheville, N.C., and grew up in the communities of Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and Shelby. Her large and impressive first novel, Moon Women, was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Award Finalist, and her second novel, Plant Life, won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Jennifer Dishman currently lives in Lexington and is a graduate of Eastern KY University with a B.S. in Corrections and Juvenile Services. She is a Veteran of the U.S. Navy and has held a variety of other professional positions. Ms. Dishman currently volunteers with CASA—Court Appointed Special Advocate for children and is actively involved as a volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Lexington affiliate. Among her many outreach activities, Ms. Dishman is a Family to Family teacher, an In Our Own Voice presenter, as well as a Support Group Facilitator and Trainer. Kelley Coffey, a previous resident of Berea for 12 years, now lives in Mt. Vernon with her husband. In addition to being an In Our Own Voice presenter for NAMI, Ms. Coffey also serves as Vice-President of the Cumberland River Chapter of NAMI, President of Gateway at Cumberland River Comprehensive Care Center, a state board member, and as a Kentucky Peer Specialist. This presentation is part of the In Our Own Voice program, a “unique public education program developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in which two trained consumer speakers share compelling personal stories about living with mental illness and achieving recovery.” This is a special opportunity to gain a personal perspective and better understanding of what it is like to live with a mental illness.

Peanut Butter and Gender presents Nancy Jack Todd. She is the co-founder of the New Alchemy Institute, editor of Annals of Earth, and author of A Safe and Sustainable World: The promise of ecological design. This is one segment of the 10th Anniversary Event for the SENS program at Berea College.

Jayne Anne Phillips, author of the novels Lark and Termite, Motherkind, Shelter, and Machine Dreams, will read on Friday, March 13, at a celebration of the winter 2009 issue of Appalachian Heritage, a literary quarterly published by Berea College from the Appalachian Center. The winter 2009 issue includes a pre-publication excerpt from Lark and Termite, literary criticism from a French critic, a biographical sketch, and a fascinating essay on Phillips by Meredith Sue Willis, a fellow West Virginia native. Phillips will be reading from Lark and Termite, and is appearing on campus as part of her new book tour. A Lexington Herald-Leader review, reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, calls Phillips’s new book “luminous, haunting and singular,” and assesses that “the novel’s raw immediacy is really quite spectacular.” Set during the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea, this triumphant new novel is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and the unseen, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us. Jayne Anne Phillips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia, attending West Virginia University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. A New York Times best-selling author, Phillips received a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first novel, Machine Dreams, which was also chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of twelve best books of the year. Shelter, her 1994 novel, was awarded an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was chosen one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Phillips has also taught at Harvard University, Williams College, and Boston University, and is currently Professor of English and Director of a new MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the A