Leatha Kendrick

Leatha Kendrick grew up on a southern Kentucky farm, daughter of a veterinarian and a high school home economics teacher. Oldest of four children, she was most at home in fields or barns (when not reading a book on the window seat and looking out at the horizon). Her adult life was spent eastern Kentucky where she and her husband raised three daughters. Kendrick began writing seriously in midlife and found a first community of writers in Appalachia. Her MFA in Poetry is from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Poems, essays, memoir, and book reviews appear in journals including Tar River Poetry, Appalachian Heritage New Madrid Review, the Southern Poetry Review, the James Dickey Review, The Southern Women’s Review – and in many anthologies including The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume 3—Contemporary Appalachia; Listen Here!: Women Writing in Appalachia; I to I—Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists; and What Comes Down to Us – Twenty-Five Contemporary Kentucky Poets. She is the author of a documentary film, A Lasting Thing for the World – The Photography of Doris Ulmann and also co-edited Crossing Troublesome – Twenty-five Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop, with George Ella Lyon. Among her writing awards are two Al Smith fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, as well as the Sallie Bingham Award and fellowships and grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She currently lives with her husband, Will, and one lively small black dog in Lexington, Kentucky. And Luckier is her fifth collection of poems.