Bluegrass Writers Studio

Wes Blake

We are thrilled to announce our signing of Wes Blake’s narrative nonfiction collection. “Hazelgreen and Other Haunts” is a memoir of place-in-essays about obscure places in Kentucky, Appalachia, impermanence, Sam Shepard, an eastern Kentucky jazz pianist, legacy, the enduring mystery of Melanie Flynn’s disappearance, lost catacombs, and more!

Wes Blake is the award-winning author of PINEVILLE TRACE (Etchings Press), a southern gothic, flash novella that won the Etchings Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His fiction and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, storySouth, Louisiana Literature Journal, and Untelling, among others. He is part of the visiting faculty at Eastern Kentucky University’s Bluegrass Writers Studio MFA in Creative Writing Program and lives in Nonesuch, Kentucky with his wife and cats, where they’ve planted 100 trees.

Recommended June Reads Courtesy of Lake Forest Library

https://www.lakeforestlibrary.org/node/38556

Preparing for the 2026 #BGWS Domestic Summer Residency (6.26.26 to 7.11.26). Properly.

Ryan Walker

James B. Wells

Congratulations to James B. Wells whose book "Because: A CIA Coverup & A Son's Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew" advanced to the finals of the CIBA Military & Front Line Narrative Nonfiction Book Awards.