found: Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning, August 26, 2021:Gurney Norman (Born: July 22, 1937 - Grundy, Virginia; Fiction writer, essayist, literary critic, editor, screenwriter, teacher, and mentor, Gurney Norman is widely recognized as an authority on the literary and cultural history of Appalachia. Most of his career was spent as director of the University of Kentucky's Creative Writing Program. Norman was reared in southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky. After his education at the Stuart Robinson Settlement School, Norman graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1959 with degrees in literature and creative writing. After two years in the U.S. Army, he returned to eastern Kentucky in 1963 to work as a reporter for the Hazard Herald. Three years later he resigned to concentrate on writing fiction, taking a job with the U.S. Forest Service as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon in the summers of 1966 and 1967. Norman joined the University of Kentucky's Department of English faculty in 1979. He served as director of the Creative Writing Program until 2014. In the late 1980s, Norman began a collaboration with Kentucky Educational Television to produce three one-hour documentary programs. The documentaries were written and narrated by Norman. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Berea College in 2011. Norman was named Kentucky Poet Laureate for 2009-2010. He served several years as senior writer-in-residence at Hindman Settlement School's annual Appalachian Writer's Workshop.)