Gurney Norman

FEATURED AUTHOR-GURNEY NORMAN Gurney Norman George Brosi Gurney Norman is a compelling personality, outstanding author and a leader who has worked tirelessly to stimulate, encourage and gain recognition for Appalachian literature. Norman's writing is true to the traditional lives and language of mountain people. At the same time, his work is anchored in a solid vision that is informed by a truly international consciousness. Gurney Norman was born on July 22, 1937, in Grundy, Virginia. His father, Howard Norman, grew up in Allais coal camp, near Hazard, Kentucky, and worked in the Allais mine until he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. His mother, Thelma Musick Norman, taught in the Perry County, Kentucky public schools in the 1930s and early 1940s, until mental illness caused her to be hospitalized. His maternal grandfather, R.F. Musick worked in the underground mines in Lee County, Virginia for thirty years. After the war, he and three of his sons operated a small pony mine for several years. Mr. Musick and his wife, Mary Kirk Musick, lived in the traditional Appalachian way, raising and canning most of the family's food, milking cows, raising hogs and heating their house with coal fires in two grates and the stove in the kitchen. Gurney Norman's paternal grandfather was Gurney Wesley Norman, who managed the commissary for Columbus Mining Company at Allais from 1915 to 1946. His wife, young Gurney's grandmother, Flora Lewis Norman, was the daughter of Sam Lewis, Knox County, Kentucky's sheriff around the turn of the twentieth century. Gurney's father, Howard, never really recovered from his service in World War II, and his mother remained a hospital patient for several years. By the time Gurney was five, he and his older brother, Jerry, and younger sister, Gwynne, began moving back and forth between their two sets of grandparents. At the age of nine, Gurney enrolled at Stuart Robinson School in Letcher County, Kentucky, a Presbyterian mission school where he roomed and boarded with other students. While he was a student there, Jerry, a popular senior at Hazard High School, was killed in a car wreck two weeks before his high school graduation, a devastating experience for Gurney and Gwynne. Norman graduated from Stuart Robinson School in 1955 and went from there to the University of Kentucky where he received a journalism degree in 1959. At UK, Norman's friends included fellow writers Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, Ed McClanahan and Bobbie Ann Mason. He was also influenced by the writer and professor, Hollis Summers. His other writing professor at UK, Robert Hazel, suggested that Norman apply for a Wallace Stegner CreativeWriting Fellowship to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Then he "bugged" him about doing it. Hazel even threatened to never talk to him again if he didn't apply. Finally, Norman filled out the simple application, cutting and pasting in work he had published in a local literary magazine, stamped the envelope and tossed it in the back seat of his car. Soon it fell to the floor and started to get stepped on. Finally on December 31—the deadline—Norman happened to stop at a drugstore in Newland, North Carolina, about 4:00 in the afternoon and, out of the corner of his eye, noticed one of those round-topped postal boxes. He grabbed the application from the floor of the car and threw it in the box. The result was that he received a Stegner Fellowship, the opportunity of a lifetime, because a teacher was bound and determined to encourage him. At Stanford, Norman's studied under Wallace Stegner, the critic Malcolm Cowley and the Irish short story writer, Frank O'Connor. After leaving Stanford, Norman joined the Army, serving as an infantry lieutenant at Fort Ord, near Monterey, California. Then he returned to Hazard, Kentucky where he worked as a reporter for the weekly'Hflzarii Herald newspaper from 1963-1965, an exciting time when the Rovin' Pickets of Southeastern Kentucky were active and indigenous movements against strip-mining and for black lung compensation were in their formative stages. His friends and colleagues at the time included Tom and Pat...