Llewellyn McKernan is a poet, children's book writer, and teacher who has lived and worked in Huntington, WV, for over thirty years. She has a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from Brown University and a Master's in English from the University of Arkansas. She has been an adjunct English professor at St. Mary's College, the University of Arkansas, and Marshall University. Among the eleven writing grants she has received are ones from the American Association of University Women, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the West Virginia Humanities Council. Her work has won ninety-six prizes, awards, and honors in state, regional, and national contests. It has also appeared in forty-three anthologies and in such journals as The Kenyon Review, Appalachian Journal, Southern Poetry Review, Antietam Review, Appalachian Heritage, Now &Then, and others. Five of her poetry books for adults have been published: Short and Simple Annals, Many Waters, Llewellyn McKernan's Greatest Hits, Pencil Memory, and The Sound of One Tree Falling. Four poetry books for children have also been published: More Songs of Gladness, Bird Alphabet, This Is The Day, and This Is The Night. Almost all these achievements occurred while she was living in West Virginia, where she still lives with her husband on a rural route. "If home is where the heart is," she says, "writing poetry is always home to me, and I've written more poems in West Virginia than anywhere else on earth."
