LEE PENNINGTON is the author of 23 books including I Knew a Woman (1977) Thigmotropism (1993) and Appalachian Newground (2016)–each nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His book, Daughters of Leda (2017) was selected as a finalist for “Best Book of Poetry published in 2017” by the American Book Fest. His Songs of Bloody Harlan was reprinted and re-released in 2019. His most recent book (2019) is Segovia’s Fingernail. He has had over 1300 poem published in more than 300 magazines in America and abroad. He has had nine plays produced, wrote the script for The Moonshine War (MGM, 1970, starring Alan Alda, Richard Widmark, etc.), and has published thousands of poems, articles and short stories in everything from Playgirl to Mountain Life and Work. His novel, Moment of the Butterfly, will be released by Hydra Publications in 2024.
Beginning in 1990, through his video production company, JoLe Productions (joleproductions.com), Lee, along with his late wife, Joy, produced 21 documentaries including In Search of the Mudmen (1990), Wales: History in Bondage (1995), and Secret of the Stones (1998), Eyes that Look at the Sky: The Mystery of Easter Island (2001), The Mound Builders (2001), The Serpent Fort: Solving the Mystery of Fort Mountain, Georgia (2005), Let Me Not Drown on the Waters: Fred Rydholm, Michigan’s “Mr. Copper.” After Joy’s death, Lee has produced five more documentaries for a total of 26 : Some Days You Clean, Some Days You Litter: The Amazing Warner Sizemore, 2012; Room To Fly: Anne Caudill’s Album, 2013; Bosnian Pyramids Hidden History, 2015; Seafaring Strangers: Vikings in America, Part I, 2016; and Gunung Padang: Monument to Atlantis, 2017.
Lee is a graduate Berea College in KY and the University of Iowa. He holds two Honorary Doctor degrees: Doctor of Literature from World University, and Doctor of Philosophy in Arts from The Academy of Southern Arts and Letters. He taught for nearly 40 years, the last 32 as Professor of English and creative writing at University of Kentucky Jefferson Community College until he retired in 1999.
In 1983, the Kentucky State Legislature named him Poet Laureate, a lifetime appointment.
He has traveled extensively (in all the United States, in all the Canadian Provinces except two, and in 96 foreign countries). For the past fifteen years, he has served as president of the Ancient Kentucke Historical Association, a group dedicated to the study and research of pre-Columbian contact in the Americas, especially Kentucky. He has visited all the continents including his final one, Antarctica in December 2022.
In 2013 the University of Louisville opened the Lee and Joy Pennington Cultural Heritage Gallery, named after Lee and his late wife. The gallery contains U of L’s most valuable works including the likes of first editions of Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. It will house all of Lee’s writings, films, and many artifacts he’s collected traveling around the world.
Three films are presently in the works about Lee: one, a documentary on his life, and, two, a movie about his Harlan County, KY teaching experience where he was run out of town and had contracts taking out on his head–all because of a book of poetry his students published in 1967. The third film is a series called The Story Behind the Story of Lee Pennington had its premiere at the University of Louisville in June, and won Runner Up Award for Best Documentary at the Imaginarium Indy Film Festival. This past year a press focused on publishing only poetry was named after him—Pennington Press, a division of Hydra Publications. In December 2022, !Sonablast Records released his CD album, Songs of Bloody Harlan. In 2023 his Jole Productions received the Cultural Video Award from Louisville Awards Program.
He presently lives in Kratz House, a designated historic home, in Middletown, KY with his lady, Jill Baker, an artist who has illustrated several of his books.