Kentuck Festival lineup boasts Grammy-winning singer, Alabama poet laureate

The 51st annual Kentuck Festival of the Artists will be held 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 15, and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 16 in Northport's Kentuck Park. Tickets are $10 per day, or $15 for both days. For more, see www.kentuck.org.

The festival boasts more than 260 artists selling arts and crafts, but also features musical and spoken word performances. This year, the festival's musical and spoken word lineup includes Alabama poet laureate Ashley M. Jones, "Crazy in Alabama" author Mark Childress and Grammy Award-winning musician John Paul White.

2022 Kentuck Festival:How music, spoken word performers will enhance the festival

Here's a closer look at this year's performers:

BROTHER BEN MUSIC STAGE

SATURDAY, OCT. 15

10:30-11:30 a.m.: Hiroya Tsukamoto is a composer, guitarist, and singer-songwriter from Kyoto, Japan. He began playing five-string banjo when he was 13 and took up guitar shortly after. In 2000, Hiroya received a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. He formed his own group in Boston, Interoceanico, comprising musicians from different continents, including Latin Grammy Colombian singer Marta Gomez. The group released three acclaimed records. Hiroya has released three solo albums and has been leading concerts internationally including appearances at the Blue Note (NYC), United Nations, and Japanese National Television (NHK). In 2018, Hiroya won second place in the International Finger Style Guitar Championship. www.hiroyatsukamoto.com.

11 a.m.-noon: Doc Dailey has been writing and performing original music around the South for years. From Muscle Shoals, Dailey's sound has been described as Americana, indie-folk, and gritty Southern pop. www.docdaileyandmagnoliadevil.com.

12:30-1:45 p.m.: Rollin’ in the Hay is an American alternative bluegrass band from Birmingham. The group is listed in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame as “Music Acheivers.” Starting out in local clubs including the War Eagle Supper Club in Auburn, in 2001 they were featured on the Pickin’ on Widespread Panic: A Bluegrass Tribute Album. In 2012, the band performed at Bonnaroo Music Festival, and the Briar Patch Festival in 2015. www.rollininthehay.com.

2:15-3:30 p.m.: The Wanda Band spins around 27-year-old Wanda Wesolowski, who has spent the last decade in Huntsville focused on writing and performing original songs that speak on sensitive matters of the heart, sharing insights from adolescence with unapologetic sincerity. After two self-released collections of songs, she met Andrew Sharpe, bassist of Toy Shop, who encouraged her to form an early version of the Wanda Band in 2018. Drummer Nick Recio joined in 2019, after almost a decade with acts such as Black Jacket Symphony, the Artisinals, and Nashville’s Great Peacock. The Wanda Band teamed up with keyboardist Bransen Edwards and producer/engineer Jay Burgess of the Pollies to record its debut album “One-Hit,” released in 2020. www.wandaband.com.

3:45-5 p.m.: Billy Allen & the Pollies grew from the rich legacy of the Shoals area. The Pollies are the live and touring band for many performers, and Allen is an electric front man and entertainer. The Pollies blend and arrange root elements of rock 'n' roll while creating songs whose seeming simplicity hides intrinsic complexity. www.facebook.com/billybillyallenallen. www.thepollies.net.

SUNDAY OCT. 16

10-11 a.m.: Sarah Lee Langford and Her Band starts with the front woman singer-songwriter's elements of Old South and New West, blended with Appalachian austerity, cosmic country and honky-tonk funk. Her band includes members of the Dexateens and Vulture Whale. www.corneliuschapelrecords.com/sarah-lee-langford.

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Alicja-pop began by cutting songs at home on a four-track cassette recorder, trading ideas and tapes with friends, who called themselves "4-trackers," using headphones and weird, cheap or discarded gear. Her digital album "Howlin' " includes several years' worth of songs, some minimal with one instrument, others with layers of vocal harmonies and instrument overdubs. Alicja-pop is both a solo endeavor and group venture. Alicja-pop performs as a live band featuring Alicja Trout, Lori McStay, Jared McStay and Andrew Geraci. www.alicja-pop.bandcamp.com.

1-2:15 p.m.: John Paul White grew up in Loretto, Tennessee., and now lives in Florence, not far from Muscle Shoals. He has cultivated a music career in Nashville for two decades, first as a songwriter for a major publisher, then as half of groundbreaking duo the Civil Wars. Because the music was so difficult to categorize, White has earned a fanbase among indie rock listeners, folk audiences, Americana outlets and AAA radio. www.johnpaulwhite.com.

2:30-4 p.m.: Speckled Bird comprises songwriter and guitarist Adam Morrow, guitarist and engineer Jamie Sego, keyboardist and engineer Ben Tanner, bassist and engineer Parker McAnnally, and drummer Reed Watson. The band's first single, "Tonight," was released in May 2020 by Single Lock Records. Members of the group have played with Alabama Shakes, Belle Adair, John Paul White and Cedric Burnside, among others. White, half of the late Grammy-winning duo Civil Wars, will also play the Brother Ben Stage, at 1-2:15 Sunday, leading into the Speckled Bird set. To learn more, visit www.speckledbird.net.

KATHRYN TUCKER WINDHAM SPOKEN WORD STAGE

SATURDAY OCT. 15

​9:30 a.m.: Writing our Stories, a kids’ workshop sponsored in part by Alabama Writers' Forum (third grade and older)

11:30 a.m.: Marlin Barton, first winner of the Truman Capote Prize for short fiction, was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for his recent novel novel "Children of Dust." He’s published two earlier novels, "The Cross Garden" and "A Broken Thing," and three collections of short stories, "The Dry Well," "Dancing by the River," and "Pasture Art." His stories have appeared in journals and anthologies including Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. He’s been awarded the Truman Capote Prize for short fiction. He teaches in, and helps direct, the Writing Our Stories project, a program for juvenile offenders created by the Alabama Writers’ Forum, and he’s been teaching in the low-residency master of fine arts program at Converse University since 2010.

12:30 p.m.: University of Alabama undergraduate writers, reading from =works-in-progress.

1 p.m.: Pure Products is a reading and lecture series run from UA's creative writing department. At the Kentuck Festival, Travis Truner, Kaushika Suresh, Jessica Smith, Sara Pirkle, Brett Shaw, Sara Chesire and Eric Parker will read from their work.

Turner, from Brightwater, writes fiction and teaches literature and composition courses at UA.

Suresh is an Indian-American writer who writes about girls and gossip, with work in Joyland, The Master's Review, and Roxane Gay’s The Audacity. Their novel-in-progress was chosen by Justin Torres as a finalist for the First Five Pages Prize.

Smith is author of numerous chapbooks including "Lion’s Den" (above/ground press 2019) and three full-length books of poetry, "Organic Furniture Cellar" (Outside Voices 2006), "Life-List" (Chax Press 2015), and "How to Know the Flowers" (Veliz Books 2019). Her fourth book, "The Daybooks," is forthcoming from Insert Blanc Press (2022).

Pirkle is a Southern poet, identical twin, breast cancer survivor, and board game enthusiast. Her first book, "The Disappearing Act" (Mercer University Press, 2018), won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. In 2019, she was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry. She is assistant director of creative writing at UA.

Shaw writes and teaches in Alabama. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Sycamore Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. His work has received support from the Community of Writers.

Cheshire graduated from UA's creative-writing MFA program in 2020 and teaches in UA’s English Department. She is author of an award-winning chapbook, “Unravelings” (Etchings Press 2017), and has been published in a variety of national and international literary journals. In addition to receiving AWP’s 2018 Kurt Brown Prize for Creative Nonfiction, she was a finalist for the 2018 Disquiet International Literary Award, and was longlisted for the spring 2017 American Shorter Fiction prize. Sarah gets involved in other collaborations, including curating a local art gallery, playing banjo with the Tuscaloosa Old Time Music Ensemble, and selling wearable absurdist collage art at Kentuck Saturday Art Markets.

Parker was born and raised in California. He’s been teaching in the UA English department since 2010, and currently gnashes teeth over a book manuscript about his homeless poet friend who has five college degrees.

2 p.m.: Nana Nkweti is a Cameroonian-American writer, Whiting Award winner, and AKO Caine Prize finalist whose work has garnered fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Ucross, Byrdcliffe, Kimbilio, Hub City Writers, the Stadler Center for Poetry, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her book "Walking on Cowrie Shells" was hailed by The New York Times review as “raucous and thoroughly impressive” with "stories to get lost in again and again." The collection is a Saroyan International Prize shortlistee, a New York Times Editor's Choice, Indie Next pick, recipient of starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and BookPage; and has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Oprah Daily, The Root, NPR, Buzzfeed, and The Tuscaloosa News; among others. The work features elements of mystery, horror, myth, and graphic novels to showcase the complexity and vibrancy of African diaspora cultures and identities. She is a professor of English at UA where she teaches creative writing courses that explore her eclectic literary interests: ranging from graphic novels to medical humanities onto exploring works by female authors in genres such as horror, Afrofuturism, and mystery.

3 p.m.: Michael Martone's newest books are "Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana" and "The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne." He has authored or edited two dozen other books of fiction and nonfiction including the award-winning "Flatness and Other Landscapes;" "Pensees: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle;" "The Moon Over Wapakoneta: Fictions and Science Fictions from Indiana and Beyond;" "Brooding: Arias, Choruses, Lullabies, Follies, Dirges, and a Duet;" "Winesburg, Indiana: A Fork River Anthology;" "Memoranda;" "Four for a Quarter;" "Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fiction from the Flyover;" "Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins;" "Double-wide," a collection of his early short fiction; "Michael Martone," a memoir in contributor’s notes; "Night Terrors: An Introduction to Zombiegaze," a meta-biography; and "Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art," among others. He recently retired after 40 years of teaching at Iowa State, Harvard, and Syracuse universities, and the last 24 years at the University of Alabama.

He lives, gardens, basks, and ambles in Tuscaloosa with the poet Theresa Pappas. Together they have two sons who also write, Sam Martone and Nicholas Pappas. He's edited several anthologies, won two Fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His writing has been published and cited in the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Stories and The Best American Essays anthologies; also in Harper’s, Esquire, Story, Antaeus, North American Review, Benzene, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Third Coast, Shenandoah, Bomb, and other magazines. His recognitions include the Mark Twain Award by The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature; the Indiana Author’s Award; and the 2022 Druid Arts Award for literary educator. In addition to UA, he's also taught at Warren Wilson College, Iowa State University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University.

SUNDAY OCT. 16

10 a.m.: The Rude Mechanicals. Members of Tuscaloosa's summer Shakespeare troupe, founded in 2003, will read from works by the stage's namesake, storyteller, folklorist and journalist Kathryn Tucker Windham.

11: a.m.: UA undergraduate writers.

1:30 p.m.: Ashley M. Jones is poet laureate of the state of Alabama, 2022-2026. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and is the author of "Magic City Gospel" (Hub City Press 2017), "dark / / thing" (Pleiades Press 2019), and "REPARATIONS NOW!" (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award.

She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020, and her collection, "REPARATIONS NOW!" was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Jones has been featured on news outlets including Good Morning America, ABC News, and the BBC. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others.

She co-directs PEN Birmingham, and is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She teaches in the creative writing department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and is part of the Core Faculty of the Converse University Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. In 2022, Johnson received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

2:30 p.m.: Mark Childress was born in 1957 in Monroeville, and grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. He's author of seven novels: "A World Made of Fire" (Knopf, 1984), "V For Victor" (Knopf, 1988) "Tender" (Harmony, 1990), "Crazy in Alabama" (Putnam, 1993), "Gone for Good," (Knopf, 1988) "One Mississippi," (Little Brown, 2006), and "Georgia Bottoms" (published February 2011 by Little, Brown & Co.)

His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday Review, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Travel and Leisure, and other national and international publications. After graduation from UA in 1978, Childress was a reporter for The Birmingham News, features editor of Southern Living magazine, and regional editor of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. He has been writing fiction full time since 1987.

"Tender," a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection, was named to several Ten Best of 1990 lists, and appeared on many national bestseller lists. "Crazy in Alabama," a featured selection of the Literary Guild, has been published in 11 languages, and appeared on bestseller and Ten Best of 1993 lists. It was named The (London) Spectator’s “Book of the Year” for 1993 and a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” and was on the Spiegel bestseller list in Germany for 10 months.

"One Mississippi" was a BookSense Notable Book of the Year, nominated for SIBA Book of the Year,and appeared on the "hot summer book" lists of Good Morning America, People, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, O: the Oprah Magazine, and the New York Public Library.

Childress has received the Thomas Wolfe Award, the University of Alabama’s Distinguished Alumni Award, the Harper Lee Award, and the Alabama Library Association’s Writer of the Year, and has been a longtime staff member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, California.

He wrote the screenplay for the Columbia Pictures film "Crazy in Alabama," directed by Antonio Banderas, and starring Melanie Griffith, an official selection of the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals in 1999.

Childress collaborated with Gregory Vajda on the libretto of "Georgia Bottoms: A Comic Opera of the Modern South," which held its world premiere in Huntsville in 2015, with performances in 2017 at CAFe Budapest Arts Festival in Hungary.

He has also written three picture books for children, "Joshua and Bigtooth," in 1992, "Joshua and the Big Bad Blue Crabs," 1996 (both from Little, Brown), and "Henry Bobbity Is Missing And It Is All Billy Bobbity’s Fault," (Crane Hill Publishers, 1996).

Childress is now working on a new novel and a film project.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Kentuck Festival lineup: Grammy-winning singer, Alabama poet laureate