Kentucky Star Awards 2009
Award Winners

SILAS HOUSE
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literary Arts

Silas House is the author of three novels: Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo, a play, The Hurting Part, and Two Stories, an audio recording of two short stories. In 2009 he will publish Something’s Rising, a creative nonfiction book about social protest co-authored with Jason Howard, as well as his fourth novel, Eli the Good. A new play, Long Time Traveling, will premiere in April 2009 at Actors Guild of Lexington. House serves on the fiction faculty of the Master in Fine Arts program at Spalding University and as Writer-in-Residence at Lincoln Memorial University, where he also directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. He is a contributing editor for No Depression magazine, where he has done long features on such artists as Lucinda Williams, Nickel Creek, Darrell Scott, and many others. He is also one of Nashville’s most in-demand press kit writers, having written the press kit bios for such artists as Kris Kristofferson, Kathy Mattea, Leann Womack, and many others. House is a two-time finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize, a two-time winner of the Kentucky Novel of the Year, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Chaffin Prize for Literature, the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and many other honors.  Recently House was personally selected by the subject to write the foreword for the biography of Earl Hamner, creator of The Waltons. For his environmental activism House received the Helen Lewis Community Lewis Award in 2008 from the Appalachian Studies Association. House is currently working on his fifth novel, Evona Darling. He lives in Eastern Kentucky, where he was born and raised. Photo by Curt Richter.

EVERETT McCORVEY
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literary Arts

Everett McCorvey, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, received his degrees from the University of Alabama. He moved to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1991. Dr. McCorvey holds the rank of Professor of Voice and the Lexington Opera Society Endowed Chair in Opera Studies, and is the Director and Executive Producer of University of Kentucky Opera Theatre. As a tenor soloist, he has enjoyed critical acclaim and has performed in many prestigious venues around the globe, including the Kennedy Center, Radio City Music Hall, theMetropolitan Opera, and Italy's Teatro Comunale. He established and directs the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group of 24 professional singers who tour annually throughout theUnited States and abroad. Dr. McCorvey is also vice-chairman of the Kentucky Arts Council for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He serves on the board of the National Association of State Arts Agencies and the Alltech World Equestrian Games Federation Board, which will produce the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in 2010, the largest equestrian event in the history of the United States. Most recently he was elected as a faculty representative to the UK Board of Trustees. Dr. McCorvey holds the rank of Professor of Voice and Director of Opera at the University of Kentucky.  He is also the holder of the Lexington Opera Society Endowed Chair in Opera Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is married to soprano Alicia Helm. They have three children.

WILLIAM PRESTON SLUSHER
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literary Arts

William Preston Slusher, known internationally as “Preston the Magician and Hypnotist” was born in Pineville, Kentucky May 6, 1915.  At an early age he attended a performance by the legendary Harry Blackstone and was smitten with magic.  During World War II Sergeant Slusher was Director of Entertainment at Fort Meade, and during these years he was awarded the coveted Blackstone Cup by his hero Harry Blackstone.  This was comparable in magic circles to “Best New Artist of the Year” at the Grammies. He began to perform at a multitude of colleges and universities such as Duke, Clemson, the Universities of Kentucky and Tennessee and many others.  This led to a relationship with Dr. J.B. Rhine of Duke University who was the developer of the polygraph and he worked clinically with Dr. Rhine testing the effects of hypnosis on the polygraph.  Around this time he had a weekly live television show every Sunday evening on the old (long defunct) Gulf South Network originating out of Augusta, Georgia. In the mid-fifties Preston noted that the natural amphitheater at Pine Mountain State Park in Pineville was being used only one day a year, that being during the Mountain Laurel Festival.  Being the penultimate promoter, he procured “The Book of Job”, a biblical drama, and was instrumental in forming the Kentucky Mountain Theatre Association. In the mid seventies he was named President of his beloved IBM (International Brotherhood of Magicians) the largest magicians’ organization in the world.  By the time Preston left the stage he had performed for three Presidents and he continued to make numerous gratis appearances at hospitals and nursing homes in the Sarasota, Florida area.  He was a gentle, unassuming, very moral man who was proud of his Kentucky roots and touted Kentucky to the end. Preston died in 1994 in Sarasota and was buried in Pineville.