poet, editor, educator
Marianne Worthington grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and moved to southeastern Kentucky in 1990 where she works as a teacher, editor, and writer. She is author of Water. Witness. Word., poems from Belle Point Press (2026), and The Girl Singer, poems from University Press of Kentucky (2021), winner of the Weatherford Prize for Poetry. She co-founded and co-edited Still: The Journal, an online literary magazine publishing writers, artists, and musicians with ties to the Appalachian region (2009-2024). Her work has been supported by the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship at Berea College. In 2026 she was awarded the inaugural Writing Prize from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has edited five anthologies, including two for the Hindman Settlement School. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, CALYX, Grist, Appalachian Review, and One Art, among other places. A retired and recovering college professor, she often teaches poetry and nonfiction writing classes for workshops and conferences.
Marianne Worthington 