Authors and participants featured at the Lewisburg Literary Festival
(UPDATED 5/27/12)

Homer H. Hickam, Jr. grew up in Coalwood, West Virginia. He graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in 1964 with a BS degree in Industrial Engineering. Hickam has been a writer since 1969 after his return from Vietnam. At first, he mostly wrote about his scuba diving adventures for a variety of different magazines. Then, after diving on many of the wrecks involved, he branched off into writing about the battle against the U-boats along the American east coast during World War II. This resulted in his first book, Torpedo Junction (1989), a military history best-seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press. In 1998, Delacorte Press published Hickam's second book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, the story of his life in the little town of Coalwood, West Virginia. It became an instant classic. Rocket Boys has since been translated into eight languages and also released as an abridged audio book and electronic book. In February, 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys (The title October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys).

Mr. Hickam's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon (1999).  The Coalwood Way, a memoir of Homer's hometown he calls "not a sequel but an equal," was published by Delacorte Press in 2000.  His third Coalwood memoir, a true sequel titled Sky of Stone, was published in 2001.  His final book about Coalwood was published in 2002, a self help/inspirational tome titled We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town That Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie October Sky.

His latest work is the novel Red Helmet (2008) published by Thomas Nelson. He is also the author of a popular series of novels that feature Josh Thurlow, a Coast Guard officer during World War II. The series began with The Keeper's Son (2003), then continued with The Ambassador's Son (2005) and The Far Reaches (2007).

While working on his writing career, Mr. Hickam was employed as an engineer for the U.S. Army Missile Command from 1971 to 1981 assigned to Huntsville, Alabama, and Germany. He began employment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1981 as an aerospace engineer. During his NASA career, Mr. Hickam worked in spacecraft design and crew training. His specialties at NASA included training astronauts on science payloads, and extravehicular activities (EVA). He also trained astronaut crews for many Spacelab and Space Shuttle missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope deployment mission, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (the first Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Mr. Hickam was the Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program.

Jerry West was born in Cabin Creek, West Virginia and raised in nearby Cheylan.  His childhood was largely shaped by basketball and tragedy. At the age of 12, his oldest brother, David, was killed in combat in the Korean War. Despite their 10-year age difference, the two brothers were close and David had encouraged West in his studies and athletic dreams. He practiced his skills using a makeshift hoop nailed to a storage building at a neighbor's house. At East Bank High School in East Bank, West Virginia he led the school to the state championship during his senior year and became the first player in state history to score more than 900 points in a single season. The guard's accomplishments became such celebrated stuff that residents of East Bank renamed the town "West Bank" for a day. Today the town continues the tradition each year on March 24.

West attended West Virginia University. He led the Mountaineers to the NCAA title game his junior year and the following season averaged more than 29 points per game, en route to earning MVP honors for the Southern Conference. In all West would finish with eye-popping college numbers, setting 12 school records.  In the 1960 NBA draft, West was chosen second overall by the Minneapolis Lakers, a franchise that soon moved to Los Angeles.

West's impact on the club was immediate. For the 1961 season he helped the club return to the playoffs. The following year, his value to the team rocketed, with West averaging more than 30 points per game and leading the Lakers to the NBA finals.  While the Lakers lost that year, and repeated the trend over the next few seasons, West proved extremely valuable to the team.  Known for his calm demeanor and lethal crunch time scoring touch, he built a reputation for his skill at scoring points. During the 1965 playoffs, he averaged more than 40 points per game. The Lakers returned for repeated championships during his time with the team. 

Following the 1974 season, Jerry West retired from playing basketball with career totals that included 25,192 points and 14-All Star nods. His impact on the game cannot be underestimated. It's a silhouette of West dribbling the ball that inspired the classic NBA logo, still in use today.

West was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979 and was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary Team in 1996.

In 1976, Jerry West returned to the Lakers for a three-year stint as head coach. After working as a scout for the team beginning in 1979, he was named general manager of the club at the start of the 1982 season.

While some instrumental players, in the form of Ervin "Magic" Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were already in place to form a formidable Laker team, West is credited with molding the club, through trades, drafts, and free agents, into a franchise that would go on to win five NBA titles during the 1980s.

In 1996 West showed his executive touch again when he signed Shaquille O'Neal to a mammoth free agent contract and pulled off a deal for the draft rights for a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant.

Following the 2002 season Jerry West stepped down from his position with the Lakers and for the first time in his life, found work with a different NBA team when he took on the role of President of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.

The Grizzlies finished 50-32 in 2004, the franchise's first winning season and earned West Executive of the Year honors. While a string of playoff appearances would follow, West was never able to replicate the championship success he'd created in LA, with his new club. Following a disappointing 2007 season, West resigned from the franchise.

In October of 2011, West’s memoir, West on West: My Charmed, Tormented Life was released by Little Brown and Company.  In it West talks not only about not only his legendary career but also his difficult childhood in West Virginia and battles with depression. 
 

Lee Maynard was born and raised in the hardscrabble ridges and hard-packed mountains of West Virginia, an upbringing that darkens and shapes much of his writing

Maynard's novel, Crum, was the first original fiction published by Washington Square Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. In its first month of publication, the novel rose to No. 8 on the Doubleday Best Seller List. The novel has been taught in English literature classes in a score of prestigious universities. Sometimes called "the book that wouldn't die", Crum was republished by Vandalia Press (a commercial imprint of West Virginia University Press) in the summer of 2001. It was the first book published by Vandalia and within a year became the best selling book in the history of the university.

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded a Literary Fellowship in Fiction to Maynard for Crum's sequel, Screaming With The Cannibals, published by Vandalia Press in 2002. His third book, The Pale Light of Sunset, a work of creative nonfiction, was published by Vandalia in October 2009.  The third and last volume of the Crum trilogy, The Scummers, was published by Vandalia in spring, 2012.

Maynard's short fiction has appeared in such publications such as Columbia Review of Literature, Appalachian Heritage and the literary magazine, Kestrel.

As a journalist, Maynard was an assignment writer for Reader's Digest for more than two decades. His journalism and non-fiction work has appeared more than 100 times in publications as diverse as The Saturday Review, Rider Magazine, Washington Post, Country America, Dual Sport News and Christian Science Monitor.

Much of Maynard's work is highly controversial. His novel, Crum, was banned in his home state and, even today, stirs deep, conflicting emotions among the people of Appalachia. Nevertheless, Maynard's work has been critically acclaimed. His prose has been held in comparison to Hemingway, Twain, Harris, Faulkner and Salinger.

Specializing in the novel, Maynard has taught at many national and regional workshops, including the Appalachian Writers Workshop, Southwest Writers Workshop, and West Virginia Writers Conference. He has served as Writing Master at Allegheny Echoes.

Maynard has been a management and editorial consultant to newspapers, magazines and small publishing companies, and was once a college president.

He lives near Santa Fe.

Playing completely by ear, and with passion and power possessed by few performing songwriters, Pops Walker is something of an enigma. At his live performances, listeners who hear him for the first time are usually stunned. A typical response is, “That’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen or heard – why haven’t we heard of you before?”

The answer is simple. Until September, 2003, Walker was a paralegal, for the US Army, working in the Pentagon. It was simply a stroke of luck and karma that he wasn’t killed on 9/11/01. But that’s another story. But there’s the answer to that often posed question of “Where have you been?”

It wasn’t until 2003 that he burst onto the folk music scene. He had been laying the foundations for years for this breakout. Before then, he performed only two or three times a year, but kept perfecting his skills as a songwriter, singer and especially as a guitarist. He was waiting for the right moment to enter the music scene – and that time came the day he retired from serving his country. And indeed, the very same day that he signed out of the Army, he was the opening act for the Mountain Stage NewSong Festival. He walked out of one life and happily into another.

Since then, things have gone well for him. He’s released four more CDs, (a total of six now), and has had the privilege of playing the same venues as Leo Kotke, Kathy Mattea, John Gorka, Richie Havens, Darryl Scott, and a slew of other great songwriters and performers. And while it was the folk circuit that opened their doors to him at first, the blues lovers discovered him shortly thereafter. He’s comfortable with either audience, and can tailor his performances to fit the audience at hand.

His shows vary a bit, depending on the audience (blues fans vs. folkies), but in either case, you can expect a high-energy, mesmerizing performance of original songs with an old chestnut or two included. And while up-tempo blues is his favorite style, it’s only part of his repertoire. Listening to any of his recordings, one can hear dashes of folk, jazz, country, and a tidy little genre called Southern Fried Zen Mojo, a phrase coined just for him.  He performs with every inch of his being and his joy is contagious. He engages the crowd with dashes of humor, anecdotes, and bits of background about his tunes. And he does it in such a way that most of the audience feels that he’s talking directly with each of them. He makes it personal. Listening to his CDs his recordings is a treat, but watching him perform is an absolute joy.

In 2007, Pops collaborated with Mountain Whispers Audio Books to provide the music for their audio book adaptation of Lee Maynard's novel Crum.  This led to his meeting Lee Maynard himself and the two became fast friends.  Together, they have created a unique literary/musical stage show in which Pops accompanies on guitar for prose readings by Lee.  They've graced the stages of the West Virginia Writers Summer Conference as well as Pops' Shennandoah River Song Fest.  And they will bring their collaboration to the stage of the Lewis Theatre on August 4.

Soulful: this is how a listener perceives a performance by Kipyn Martin. Often compared to Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, songwriter Kipyn Martin sings from the core. She was a semi-finalist in the 2007 NewSong Academy Songwriting Competition, and a finalist in the 2009 Shenandoah Valley Acoustic Roots Songwriting Competition. Kipyn has shared stages with award-winning independent artists such as Chuck E. Costa, Trina Hamlin, Beaucoup Blue, and Pops Walker. Kipyn is a versatile performer, mostly operating within the blues and folk genres. Listeners can expect no frills. Just soul.

Belinda Anderson holds a bachelor's degree in news-editorial journalism and a master's of liberal arts studies.  She's written for such publications as The West Virginia Encyclopedia, Goldenseal, Wonderful West Virginia, Book Page and Writers' Journal, among others.

She was a recipient of a professional development grant from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Belinda often presents readings and fiction and nonfiction workshops.  In 2004, Belinda was inducted into the ranks of those authors and literary figures who appear on the first official Literary Map of West Virginia.  Her first collection of award-winning short stories, The Well Ain't Dry Yet, was published in 2001.  Publisher Mountain State Press brought out her second collection, The Bingo Cheaters, in 2006, and her most recent collection, Buckle Up, Buttercup, was published in the Summer of 2008.

For the Literary Festival, Belinda Anderson wrote the short story "The Knitter" which serves as the basis for the knitting art installation in the downtown greenspace. 

---

---