Frances Figart’s Clark Co. roots shape Smokies writing

By Steve Flairty | NKy Tribune

Don’t mis­un­der­stand. There’s a whole lot of “Kentucky” in Frances Figart’s new book, Word from the Smokies: A Nature Reader. It’s maybe not in words about the state, but the Bluegrass is in her blood, for sure.

Will share more on that lat­er. For now, let’s take a look at how a col­lec­tion of nat­ur­al-life sto­ries from her week­ly col­umn came to be a new book.

Frances is the cre­ative direc­tor of Smokies Life, an asso­ci­a­tion non-prof­it sup­port­ing the edu­ca­tion­al, his­tor­i­cal, and sci­en­tif­ic pro­grams of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s a big respon­si­bil­i­ty, as she leads a cre­ative team who “pro­duce books, peri­od­i­cals, videos, and pod­casts and oth­er projects that help park vis­i­tors under­stand the cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al his­to­ry of the Southern Appalachian region.”

A “mover and shak­er” in the writ­ing world in her region, she is most recent­ly involved with the Tremont Writers Conference this year held October 21–25 near Townsend, Tennessee, a project she co-found­ed with not­ed Northern Kentucky writer Ron Ellis and Jeremy Lloyd, who Ron first approached.

Regarding her new book, a few years back dur­ing COVID-19 when vis­it­ing the park was cur­tailed for fear of dis­ease trans­mis­sion, Frances began writ­ing a week­ly col­umn. The pur­pose was to help inter­est­ed peo­ple con­tin­ue to make con­nec­tions to the park, even from the dis­tance, hope­ful­ly, of their liv­ing rooms.

Called “Word from the Smokies,” the col­umn first appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times in 2020. In it, she has writ­ten both first and third-per­son arti­cles about the nat­ur­al world of the Smokies area, com­mu­ni­cat­ing both infor­ma­tion and per­son­al pas­sion. It has helped answer a need for those kept apart from a place they loved.

Her 2026 col­lec­tion of 24 of those writ­ing pieces show­cas­es her crafty writ­ing abil­i­ty, already demon­strat­ed in a wide assort­ment of oth­er pub­lished offer­ings, includ­ing three children’s books pub­lished by Smokies Life: A Search for Safe Passage (2021), Mabel Meets a Black Bear (2023), and Camilla and the Caterpillars (2024).

But now for the “Kentucky” part of this cred­i­ble voice for the nat­ur­al world, who lives in Flag Pond, Tennessee, near Ashville, North Carolina. I want­ed to know her con­nec­tion to my favorite state and how that has helped devel­op her per­son­al incli­na­tions and dis­tinct writ­ing voice.

She gen­er­ous­ly shared that con­nec­tion in an email interview.

The prac­tice of writ­ing and lead­ing oth­ers in com­mu­ni­cat­ing about con­ser­va­tion of the nat­ur­al world “goes back to my own child­hood, which was idyl­lic,” Frances explained. “I grew up in the tiny com­mu­ni­ty of Trapp, in Eastern Kentucky’s Clark County, at a sum­mer camp for which my par­ents act­ed as over­seers. I spent sum­mer days swim­ming, canoe­ing, hik­ing, and horse­back rid­ing, immers­ing myself in a land­scape of Appalachian wildlife.” Her only sad­ness of the time, she not­ed, was “see­ing ani­mals hit and killed on roads.”

Frances had free­dom as a child to roam the local slate-rock hills, becom­ing, she said, “part of nature, not sep­a­rate from it.” Positive parental influ­ence abound­ed. “I tagged along as Mom led campers on nature hikes and bird walks through the wood­ed hill­sides. I watched her trans­form the tiny, timid Corinth Church choir into a force­ful ensem­ble that could deliv­er a can­ta­ta to rival those she’d been a part of dur­ing music weeks at Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina.” Her father, Ross Figart Jr., was head of moun­tain mis­sions for the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC), and his strong writ­ing voice demon­strat­ed in a KBC newslet­ter also huge­ly influ­enced Frances for what she became.

Later as an adult, she would work for adver­tis­ing and graph­ic design firms in Lexington, as well as writ­ing for the Lexington Herald-Leader. She was hap­py in those jobs, but also hap­py to reside in anoth­er locale. She lived in a cab­in “an hour’s com­mute away from the city amid oaks, hick­o­ries, pines, and hem­locks in the Daniel Boone National Forest,” she said. “Living in the com­mu­ni­ty of Furnace near Ravenna in Estill County, the Red River Gorge was my play­ground where I could hike and kayak on week­ends, and I kept up a med­i­ta­tion prac­tice at the near­by Furnace Mountain Zen Center.

“I walked dai­ly on near­by 2057, a Forest Service road, to some sacred red rocks and a blue-green lake, com­muning with beavers, box tur­tles, barred owls, and pileat­ed wood­peck­ers. That’s where I was when the planes hit the tow­ers. A few years lat­er, most of Mountain Springs Road was unsus­tain­ably logged, wreak­ing hav­oc on springs, caves, and their Indiana bat inhab­i­tants. I tried every­thing I could think of to stop the log­ging, all in vain.”

Frances would move on to become a tourism pro­fes­sion­al and live out­side the United States in both Canada and Costa Rica. She took note of “how our roads, human devel­op­ment, and extrac­tive prac­tices are dev­as­tat­ing species every­where. I want­ed to live some­place like Costa Rica, which has pro­tect­ed 25 per­cent of its land mass in parks, reserves, and sus­tain­able resort destinations.”

Though she left Kentucky for good in 2013 “after help­ing my moth­er die in Winchester,” it was her Kentucky roots that formed her, and that helped lead her to her cur­rent sta­tion in life. A good friend from Berea College, Tammy Horn (Potter), Kentucky’s State Apiarist, was help­ing restore frack­ing sites by intro­duc­ing bee colonies to what Frances called “the wound­ed land­scapes,” and she took strong note of Horn’s work. It fur­ther whet her appetite for the nat­ur­al world and enriched her love of Appalachia.

“I found myself drawn to the Great Smoky Mountains, which pro­tects 522,427 acres equal­ly shared by Western North Carolina and East Tennessee,” she said. “Here the ele­va­tions are much high­er than in Kentucky, rang­ing up to 6643 feet at Kuwohi.” There she found great nat­ur­al life diver­si­ty and real­ized that “I got my ener­gy from the moun­tains of Southern Appalachia, and this was the cen­ter of that life force.”

Frances is entrenched now in the Smokies, liv­ing in and writ­ing about the diverse land­scape she loves, har­bor­ing a deep sense of place, with, she said, “a pan­the­is­tic belief that I am nature, nature is me, and that with­out respect and pro­tec­tion for all species, we as humans are doomed.”

Back in Kentucky, we still claim her as our own.

For more about Frances Figart and her work, check out www.francesfigart.com or smokieslife.org.

This sto­ry first appeared in the NKY Tribune. Republished by per­mis­sion of the author.

Steve Flairty is a teacher, pub­lic speak­er and an author of sev­en books: a biog­ra­phy of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and six in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, includ­ing a kids’ ver­sion. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #5,” was released in 2019. Steve is a senior cor­re­spon­dent for Kentucky Monthly, a week­ly NKyTribune colum­nist, and a for­mer mem­ber of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or vis­it his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.”