Transylvania University faculty and alumni will be among the talented authors celebrated at next month’s Kentucky Book Festival.
The Kentucky Humanities event connecting authors and book lovers returns to Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington on Oct. 21.
Each year, the event highlights the outsized impact Transylvania has on Kentucky’s literary scene.
Included in the 42nd festival is Kaitlyn Hill ’16, who will share about her new young adult romance novel, “Not Here to Stay Friends.” The book tells the story of “two best friends who unexpectedly end up spending their summer around a reality dating show,” she said in an interview for the event. “While one is a contestant being courted by the lead actor of her favorite TV show, the other is a production assistant behind the scenes, and both are starting to realize their more-than-friendly feelings for each other.”
Another featured book is former Pioneers basketball coach Don Lane’s “The Lane Way: Family, Faith, and Fifty Years in Basketball,” co-authored by Sarah Jane Herbener. “I am proud to be a Hall of Fame coach, and many people know me through my coaching career, but my life has been about much more than that,” he said. “In my book, I have also included chapters about the many people who have inspired and supported me, about my family and my faith, and about my philosophies of life. I think readers will enjoy hearing about parts of my life that many who only know me as a basketball coach may not know about.”
Also spotlighted will be Transylvania English professor Maurice Manning’s upcoming “Snakedoctor” poetry collection, which draws from deep Kentucky roots. “Existing between haunting memory and pastoral dreamscape, this quiet collection showcases Manning’s storytelling at its finest,” according to publisher Copper Canyon Press. Major magazines like the New Yorker have recently published poems by Manning, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Guggenheim Fellow.
Alumna Penney Sanders ’67 is also part of this year’s lineup with her co-authored “The Last Journey: A Road Map for Ending-of-Days.” “Everyone will benefit from our book,” she said. “However, the book is directed toward those doing end-of-life planning: making wills and directives, as well as those involved in some aspect of the journey with a terminal illness.” Sanders, who received Transylvania’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1997 for her contributions to the field of education, lives in Washington State.
Additionally, professor emeritus Richard Taylor will be highlighted at the fair for his recently released “Fathers,” described as a “combination of memoir and creative non-fiction, focused on multiple fathers — both paternal and associational.” Taylor, who received Transylvania’s 2023 Judy Gaines Young Book Award, is a former state poet laureate and member of the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.