James Still, a native of Alabama, came to Knott County in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression and, taken with the mountains of eastern Kentucky, chose to stay and devote himself full time to writing. His novels, short stories, poetry, and children's literature were rooted in affection for his adopted Appalachian home and used language with rare clarity to evoke its sights and sounds, personalities, and situations. After accepting a job as librarian at Hindman Settlement School, he published his first poem in 1935 and went on to write short stories such as Brother to Methuselem, much of them, like his poetry, drawn from the community where he lived. In 1937 his collected poems appeared as Hounds on the Mountain. In June 1939 he moved "nine miles over a wagon road and two miles up a creek bed" to a century-old two-story log house, where he completed his first novel, River of Earth, published in 1940 and regarded as an American classic. For more than sixty years he lived and wrote in that log house bounded by Deadmare Branch and Wolfpen Creek, crafting poems and stories that captured the wisdom and humor, people and places, of his Appalachian home.