On September 23, the public is invited to celebrate the Summer 2011 issue of “Appalachian Heritage” at Berea College’s Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at 205 North Main Street in Berea, Kentucky. The featured author for this issue of the magazine, Lee Maynard, is the featured reader for the event. It will start at 7:30 p.m. for refreshments followed by the reading at 8 p.m.
Coming from his home in New Mexico, Maynard is not only a distinguished writer, but also an entrepreneur, business consultant, educator, white-water rafter, motorcycle rider and an airplane co-pilot. A native of West Virginia, he is the author of two hilarious and insightful coming-of-age novels, “Crum” and “Screaming with the Cannibals” (second part of the “Crum” trilogy), and “The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life,” an eclectic collection of his writings.
West Virginia author, Meredith Sue Willis, says, “Each time I read Lee Maynard’s ‘Crum,’ I ask myself why this foul-mouthed, sexist, scatological, hillbilly-stereotyping novel is one of my all-time favorites.” The novelist, Stephen Coots responds, “Crum is great. Lee Maynard is a genius. No writing has captured rural America this well since Mark Twain. A masterpiece.”
Maynard grew up in Wayne County, West Virginia, and immediately after graduating from West Virginia University was hired to edit “West Virginia Conservation,” a perfect blend of his nature-loving life-style and his writing skills. He then edited “West Virginia Commerce” which prepared him to serve as executive secretary of the West Virginia Commission on Manpower, Technology and Training. This resulted in an appointment as national director of operations for Outward Bound and then executive posts with Prescott University. The founder of nearly a dozen start-up businesses, in recent years Maynard has been a consultant to non-profits and businesses. For 20 years he was a freelance writer for “Reader’s Digest,” often traveling to exotic locations to do “Adventure in Real Life” articles. Currently Lee Maynard is chairman of the board of The Storehouse, one of the largest food banks in the West. He is also in demand as a workshop leader at writing conferences. The event is co-sponsored by the Berea College Appalachian center and the department of English, theatre and communication.
Appalachian Heritage is a literary quarterly devoted to the literature of Southern Appalachian that features the work of one particular author in each issue but also includes poetry, stories and essays on a variety of subjects relevant to its region. It was founded in 1973 at Alice Lloyd College and has been published by Berea College since 1985.