Jeffrey A. Keith was in line to become a sixth-generation Kentucky tombstone salesman, but he discovered a different way to engage with the past.  He earned a doctorate in history from the University of Kentucky, and now he teaches courses on U.S. foreign relations, Appalachian studies, environmental history, and globalization as a professor of global studies at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina.  He also served on the graduate faculty for Warren Wilson College’s MA program in critical craft studies from 2020-2022.  Keith writes essays and reviews about rural life, cultural history, and U.S. diplomacy, and has published work in popular outlets (Oxford American and Bitter Southerner) as well as academic journals (Journal of Appalachian Studies, Diplomatic History, and The Journal of American-Southeast Asian Relations). His chapter contribution to Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music (Duke University Press, 2011) as well as his ongoing research into the song “Swannanoa Tunnel” speak to his enduring interest in Black contributions to musical traditions in the American South. He also serves as the Vice Chair of the South Asheville Cemetery Association, a non-profit that seeks to restore and improve the oldest public Black cemetery in Western North Carolina. As a guitarist, mandolinist, and vocalist, Keith has toured throughout the U.S. and abroad, playing old-time and bluegrass music.

David Weintraub is an award-winning film director having produced over 50 films that have screened at film festivals around the world and on public television.  He is the founder and director of the Center for Cultural Preservation that has completed more than 500 videotaped oral histories with elders throughout the Southern Appalachian region. Weintraub believes that understanding how people lived their lives before Walmarts and plastic devices ruled our lives is important to rekindle how communities can find ways to live more resilient, more authentic lives.  Weintraub has also published more than a dozen books, is a columnist with his local newspaper and dabbles in law when he can find the time.  As self-proclaimed environmental troublemaker for the area, Weintraub has worked with half a dozen environmental organizations in order to create a better balance between development and protecting our natural inheritance.  Finally, he is the owner of Weintraub Films, a boutique film production company, that produces documentary films for businesses and families that which to tell their story.

Steven Nash is a Professor of History at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of Reconstruction’s Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Mountain South (UNC Press, 2016), which received the Weatherford Award for Nonfiction awarded by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association. In 2010, he helped organize the Society of Appalachian Historians and helped plan its annual meetings through 2023. He maintains a strong interest in public history, serving as President of the Mountain History and Culture Group, a non-profit support board for the Zebulon B. Vance State Historic Site in Weaverville, North Carolina.

Dr. Katherine Ledford teaches courses in Appalachian literature, global mountain literature, comparative mountain studies, and higher education pedagogy at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. In spring 2023, as a Fulbright Scholar, she taught graduate classes in the English department at Al Ahliyya Amman University in Amman, Jordan. Her teaching project, From the Appalachian Mountains to the Jordanian Highlands: Appalachian Literature as Cross-cultural Text, fostered cross-cultural understanding through literature. From 2009 to 2016 Dr. Ledford served as program director of Appalachian studies, advising and mentoring both graduate and undergraduate students. In 2023, she was inducted into the Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies’ Academy of Outstanding Mentors. Dr. Ledford co-edited Writing Appalachia: An Anthology, a comprehensive anthology of Appalachian literature published by the University Press of Kentucky in March 2020. Dr. Ledford co-edited Backtalk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes (2000) and the media section of the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006). A past president of the Appalachian Studies Association (2011-2012), she is founding chair of the association’s International Connections Committee, which fosters communication between Appalachian studies scholars and mountain studies scholars around the world.