James Still

James Still studied at Lincoln Memorial University, Vanderbilt University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The recorded working language is English and American English. Residence is recorded at Wolfpen. Employment is recorded with Hindman Settlement School and Morehead State University. Positions recorded include poet laureate. Works named in the authority record are River of Earth. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — James Still • Born — 16 July 1906 • Birthplace — LaFayette, Alabama, USA • Died — 28 April 2001 • Place of death — Hazard, Kentucky, USA • Occupation — * Poet • novelist • folklorist • Education — Lincoln Memorial University Vanderbilt University University of Illinois • Notable Works — River of Earth • Relatives — J. Alex Still (father) Lonie (Lindsey) Still (mother) • Website — http: faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/sandy.hudock/jshome.html

Lonie, Still's mother was sixteen when she moved to Alabama due to a tornado destroying the family home. His father, J. Alex Still, was a horse doctor with no formal training. James Still was born July 16, 1906, near Lafayette, Alabama. Still was considered a quiet child but a hard worker. He along with his nine siblings worked the family farm. They farmed cotton, sugar cane, soybeans and corn. At the age of seven, Still began grade school. He found greater interest not in the school text books but at home where there was an edition of the Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. He became enriched with philosophy, physics and the great British poets – Shakespeare and Keats.

After graduating from high school, Still attended Lincoln Memorial University of Harrogate, Tennessee. He worked at the rock quarry in the afternoons and as a library janitor in the evenings. He would often sleep at the library after spending the night reading works of literature. Upon graduation in 1929, he began graduate work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Vanderbilt, he became involved in a controversial miner strike in Wilder, Tennessee. The miners were starving due to holding the picket line; Still delivered a truckload of food and clothing for the miners. Still graduated with an MA in English in 1930. He later completed additional graduate work at the University of Illinois.

Still tried various professions including the Civil Service Corps, Bible salesman, and even a stint picking cotton in Texas. His friend Don West—a poet and civil rights activist, among other things—offered Still a job organizing recreation programs for a Bible school in Knott County, Kentucky. Still accepted the position but soon became a volunteer librarian at the Hindman Settlement School. Knott County would become Still's lifelong home, though for many years he was the creative force behind the Morehead Writers' Workshop at nearby Morehead State University, where he taught literature during the 1960s. James Still served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II and was stationed in Egypt in 1944.