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Preserving the legacy of Jesse Stuart and the Appalachian way of life.

I'd rather have a C student with an A character than an A student with a C character. ~ Jesse Stuart

 
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Billy C. Clark

"In nineteen years of growing up here in the valley, hunger was my most vivid memory and an education was my greatest desire."--Billy C. Clark

 

 

Biography

Clark was born June 26, 1928 and grew up in Catlettsburg in Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression; He was a second cousin of writer Jesse Stuart. He had four brothers and four sisters, and was born to a mother who would wash clothes for extra income, while his father was a shoemaker who bragged of having made it to the second grade. He was living on his own by the time he was 11 years old, doing work to pay for high school, while living in a courthouse building. He would put out miles of trotlines and set traps to catch animals, drying the skins of the animals he caught on the courthouse's clock and selling the furs to make a living.
He enlisted in the military and served during the Korean War following his graduation from high school. After completing military service, he enrolled at the University of Kentucky, becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree.
 
Writing
Clark claimed to have his first work published when he was 14-years old and a collaborative effort was underway at the time of his death to publish pieces he had written while in college together with the Jesse Stuart Foundation, to be called A Heap of Hills. The foundation has reissued eight of Clark's books that had been originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons and Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
Reviewer Hal Borland in The New York Times describes the "ballad-like quality" of his 1960 autobiographical book A Long Row to Hoe, that tells the story of his life up to age 19, growing up in a community that "had more than its share of 'river trash', drunks [and] derelicts" in which the developments of electric lights and indoor plumbing did not "put an end to frontier crudeness and backwater characters". The review laments the structure of the book, but describes it as a "good story, rich in character and details, larded with anecdote and legend". The book was selected by Time magazine as one of its best books of that year, describing it "as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn". Many colleges and universities use the book to introduce students to the culture of Appalachia and its culture and the Library of Congress selected it to be recorded on a talking record for the blind. Mark Daniel Merritt composed the score of River Dreams a musical adaptation of A Long Road to Hoe. The play was written by Betty Peterson, an English professor who had been a student of Clark's.
Platt and Munk Publishers included his Trail of the Hunter's Horn in a 1964 anthology of 30 Greatest Dog Stories that also included Call of the Wild by Jack London as well as John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. The Book of the Month Club offered as a selection his book The Champion of Sourwood Mountain.
A mule named Kate would follow Clark and his friends to school. After the mule was arrested for trespassing, he and his classmates collected enough money to get the animal released on bail. Walt Disney Studios purchased the rights to his book about the mule, titled Goodbye Kate, which has yet to be made into a film by the time of Clark's death.
The University of Tennessee Press published his novel By Way of the Forked Stick in September 2000.
Clark was selected as writer-in-residence at Longwood University, after spending 18 years at the University of Kentucky in that role as a full professor. He was the founder and editor of Virginia Writing.
 
Personal
The Billy C. Clark Bridge, which crosses the Big Sandy River on U.S. Route 60 to connect Kentucky and Kenova, West Virginia, was named for him in 1992. Clark died at age 80 on March 15, 2009 at his home in Farmville, Virginia.
 
Books by Billy C. Clark
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To Leave My Heart in Catlettsburg
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To Leave My Heart in Catlettsburg
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Author: Billy C. Clark - Edwina Pendarvis, Editor Model: Paperback: 80 pages Type: 978-0945084754

This sense of appreciation for earth and its creatures runs through all of the poems in To Leave My Heart at Catlettsburg and results in a poignant...

Riverboy
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Riverboy
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Author: Billy C. Clark Model: Paperback: 160 pages Type: 978-0945084655

Brad visits old Dan Tackett each day at his cabin on the banks of the Big Sandy. But abruptly Brad's quiet world and Dan Tackett's very existence seemed...

Creeping From Winter
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Creeping From Winter
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Author: Billy C. Clark Model: Paperback: 72 pages Type: creepingfromwinter

A collection of sharply observed impressions of Appalachian rural life touching upon universal themes by one of the South's greatest...

Miss America Kissed Caleb
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Miss America Kissed Caleb
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Author: Billy C. Clark Model: Hardcover: 160 pages Type: 978-0813122960

Clark returns to his longtime haunt, the small eastern Kentucky town of Sourwood, in his latest story collection, steeped not just in the dialect of his beloved...

A Long Row to Hoe
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A Long Row to Hoe
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 285 pages Type: 978-1931672047

Boston University, the site of the world's finest repository of 20th Century literature, praises Billy C. Clark as one of the South's most distinguished...

The Champion of Sourwood Mountain
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The Champion of Sourwood Mountain
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 251 pages Type: 978-1931672191

Thirteen-year-old Aram Tate agrees to teach an Appalachian woodsman how to read and write in exchange for a hound dog and lessons about the "varmints and the...

Goodbye Kate
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Goodbye Kate
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Hardcover, 274 pages Type: 978-0945084419

Goodbye Kate is based in part on a mule Clark once owned. In the story, Kate is found far back in the hills by a lonely country boy named Isaac...

A Heap of Hills
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A Heap of Hills
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Author: Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 52 pages Type: 978-1931672726

Only the most serious students of Clark's career know that before he enjoyed national success, a collection of four stories, A...

The Mooneyed Hound
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The Mooneyed Hound
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Author: Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 144 pages Type: 978-0945084495

In this exciting sequel to Trail of the Hunter's Horn, Jeb and his hounddog, Mooneye, learn to hunt together. Jeb and the...

Useless Dog
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Useless Dog
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 144 pages Type: 978-0945084570

More than anything in the world, thirteen-year-old Caleb wants a hounddog. One spring, Caleb's father gives him the runt of a litter...

Sourwood Tales
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Sourwood Tales
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 256 pages Type: 978-0945084969

Sourwood Tales is a collection of eighteen short stories that present an accurate picture of life in the Big Sandy region of Eastern...

Song of the River
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Song of the River
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 144 pages Type: 978-0945084464

The small boys of the town loved to visit the shanty boat and to hear John's stories; but there was a tragic accident, and the boys...

The Trail of The Hunter
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The Trail of The Hunter's Horn
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Author:Billy C. Clark Model: Softcover, 96 pages Type: 978-0945084488

Uncle Jeptha's Lucy could follow a trail better than any coonhound in the hills, and Jeb was waiting for her pup. But when the pup came, the boy stared with...

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Jesse Stuart Foundation

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Ashland, KY 41101
Phone: 606.326.1667
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