Marianne Worthington

Marianne Worthington is co-founder and editor of Still: The Journal, an online literary magazine publishing writers, artists, and musicians with ties to Appalachia since 2009. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, Sweet: A Literary Confection, CALYX, and Chapter 16, among other places. She received the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council and artist’s grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship. She co-edited Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and is author of a poetry chapbook. Her poetry collection, The Girl Singer, was released in late 2021 from University Press of Kentucky and won the Weatherford Award for Poetry. Marianne grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and lives, writes, and teaches in southeast Kentucky.

The Girl Singer

The Girl Singer is part family history, part music, and part nature walk. Worthington’s attentive eye and heart are reflected in the starkly striking and painful images she paints in the poems. Every poem, whether describing a connection with Appalachian wildlife, retelling the lyrics of a classic country tune, reflecting on the speaker’s bloodline, or giving voice to famous musical figures of the past, strikes a powerful chord.