Meet Kentucky Teacher of the Year this Thursday

Kentucky’s 2022 Teacher of the Year, author Willie Carver, will be in Winchester Thursday, July 27 at Regeneration Distillery. 

You can lis­ten to a con­ver­sa­tion with Willie and our own Lashana Harney on the lat­est episode of the WinCity Voices Podcast.

Willie, who bills him­self as a “Gay Appalachian author, speak­er, and bis­cuit mak­er from east­ern KY,” will be appear­ing to meet and greet locals and read poems from his new book, Gay Poems for Red States.

Here’s what Willie has to say about him­self and his book on his offi­cial web­site:

Gay Poems for Red States is a col­lec­tion of nar­ra­tive prose poems that seek to give voice to a young queer boy from Appalachia who tried, and con­tin­ues to try, to love des­per­ate­ly a world that doesn’t always love him back.

I am proud of this work. I have long con­sid­ered Appalachia as a place plum clut­tered and spilling over with poet­ry, tucked and strung about in sto­ries and gos­sip, in our ways of lov­ing and hurt­ing each oth­er, but our poet­ry isn’t always includ­ed in con­ver­sa­tions about what poet­ry is or should be.

I hope to write so that I can do some­thing. In my life, I’ve seen a lot of peo­ple in pain. Some of that pain comes from bro­ken dreams, some from not under­stand­ing peo­ple dif­fer­ent from our­selves, and some from under­stand­ing them all too well. But all pain, though it comes from diverse places, can be healed. I hope I can help do some healing.

The event at the dis­tillery is free to the pub­lic and also includes free food and cock­tails! It will take place on Thursday, July 27 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Regeneration Distillery, 31 E. Broadway in down­town Winchester. 

Hope to see you there!