Gurney Norman is a novelist and short-story writer whose works include Divine Right's Trip, Ancient Creek: A Folktale, and Allegiance: Stories. He is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a former Kentucky poet laureate. A native of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, he was the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University. Norman has received many honors for his work and is a widely known Appalachian literary and cultural advocate. He is a coeditor of Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes and An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature.