The Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency
Board of Directors
HARRY SANFORD (left) and CHATMAN NEELY are the owners of Barn With Inn at Highland Springs Farm and co-founders of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency. Both West Virginia natives, Sanford is a practicing veterinarian, and Neely is a former social work professor and counselor.
photo by Mark Campbell
TREY ADCOCK is an author, an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies, and director of UNC-Asheville's American Indian & Indigenous Studies Program. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, Adcock is a native of western North Carolina.
photo courtesy of UNC-Asheville
ELIZABETH CATTE is a public historian and writer based in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. She is the author of the What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, a critical look at the Hillbilly Elegy-fication of politics that uses radical history to challenge perceptions of the region as a hub of white, working-class woe, and co-editor of 55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike.
photo by Brandy Somers
ROGER MAY is a photographer and writer based in Charleston, West Virginia. who was born on the West Virginia and Kentucky state line. Founder of the Looking at Appalachia project, his photographs, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous national and international publications.
photo by Roger May
WOODY PLATT is the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Grammy Winning bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers. The band's new album, In the Open, is available wherever music is sold. A native of the North Carolina mountains, Platt lives in Brevard, NC with his wife, singer/songwriter Shannon Whitworth, and their young son.
photo by Michael Wilson
FRANK X WALKER is a native of Danville, Kentucky, and founding member of the Affrilachian Poets. A professor of English at the University of Kentucky, Walker is a multi-award winning artist who has produced, directed, and written and/or edited nine collections of poetry.
photo by Patrick Mitchell
CRYSTAL WILKINSON is an award-winning author and poet who grew up in Indian Creek, Kentucky. An assistant professor of English at the University of Kentucky, she is the author of The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries.
photo courtesy of Crystal Wilkinson
EX-OFFICIO
MALLORY CASH is a photographer living in North Carolina. Co-founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous national publications, including Writers in Modern Appalachia.
Wiley Cash is a co-founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency and founder of the Open Canon Book Club. He serves as the writer-in-residence at UNC-Asheville and teaches fiction in the Mountainvew Low-Residency MFA.