The Henderson County Public Library’s Kentucky Authors Panel on Thursday evening featured writers Court Stevens, Michael Banks and Silas House, who was Kentucky’s poet laureate in 2023-2024.
House is an eastern Kentucky native born in Corbin, while Stevens and Banks are from western Kentucky—Stevens a native of Ballard County and Banks a native of Union County.
Among the many nuggets of wisdom coming from the Preston Arts Center stage were these:
- “They know the way they want to be told,” said House regarding the shapes stories take.
- Stevens said she was interested in “core-of-a-truth stories”—real people in real settings that show the tenderness of being human.
- “If you’re born in Kentucky, you never get over it,” said House, adding that people either embrace the shame from people looking down on them or become very proud of it.
- Banks, who has lived in North Carolina since 1999, said about coming home: “When you smell it, it all comes back. It’s in your heart.”
- Similarly, Stevens said when she goes to visit her mother in Ballard County, she always “rolls” her window down as she nears “because there’s nothing else that has that smell.”
- “Be brave, not clever,” Stevens said about what she tells herself when she writes now, different from her younger years when she wanted people to think her writing was clever.
The event was moderated by Eyewitness News anchor Gretchen Ross.
