Which Side Are You On? tells the story of the classic union song that was written in 1931 by Florence Reece in a rain of bullets. It has been sung by people fighting for their rights all over the world. Florence's husband Sam was a coal miner in Kentucky. Many of the coal mines were owned by big companies, who kept wages low and spent as little money on safety as possible. Miners lived in company houses on company land and were paid in scrip, good only at the company store. The company owned the miners sure as sunrise.

That's why they had to have a union. Miners went on strike until they could get better pay, safer working conditions, and health care. The company hired thugs to attack union organizers like Sam Reece.

George Ella Lyon tells this hair-raising story through the eyes of one of Florence's daughters, a dry-witted, pig-tailed gal whose vantage point is from under the bed with her six brothers and sisters. The thugs' bullets hit the thin doors and windows of the company house and the kids lying low wonder whether they're going to make it out of this alive; wonder exactly if this strike will make their lives better or end them, but their mother keeps scribbling and singing. "We need a song," she tells her kids. That's not at all what they think they need. Graphic novelist Christopher Cardinale brings Florence's triumphant story to life in true rip-roaring union style.

Selected as an IRA Notable Book for a Global Society and a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Book.

“A gigantic gift full of literary goodies . . . holiday stories poems, songs and essays, there should be something for anyone who opens this package.”—Kentucky Monthly
 
A celebration of holiday poetry, fiction, essays, recipes, and songs by more than sixty of the Bluegrass state’s finest writers. Gathered here are writings from some of the legendary voices of Kentucky—and the nation—as well as original Christmas stories and poetry from some of the state’s emerging talents. Among the contributors to this handsome collection are Kentucky’s visionaries, storytellers, historians, singers, cooks, children’s authors, and poets, including all five Kentucky Poet Laureates. A delight for anyone interested in Kentucky literature, history, or traditions, A Kentucky Christmas promises to be a wonderful holiday gift, a treasured family keepsake, and a necessary addition for libraries and for personal collections.
 
“This book could accurately be called ‘A Kentucky Christmas Tree,’ since it is a structure with various good-sized branches, all hung or draped with bits of holiday cheer.”—Appalachian Center Newsletter
“Celebrates Kentucky traditions from the first Christmas on the Falls of the Ohio to settlement days along the Cumberland to Appalachian country store windows on Christmas Eve.”—Floyd County Times
 
“This cornucopia of a book will appeal to all who count the season as the best time of the year.”—Southern Living
 
“This book will become a holiday classic.”—Suite101.com

“A story rich in precise, gorgeous language . . . Tragedies old and new weave a tiny Kentucky town into the center of the universe.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
With a Hammer for My Heart is the story of Lawanda, a precocious, poverty-stricken fifteen-year-old girl from Cardin, Kentucky, who dreams of attending college. When Lawanda’s friendship with an alcoholic World War II veteran named Garland is misinterpreted by their fellow townspeople, a tragedy calls her future into question.
 
“A compelling, skillfully told story . . . Lyon’s finest achievement.”—Lexington Herald-Leader
 
“[A] rich tale of healing, redemption, and social responsibility.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Lyon consistently reveals in her work an ability to render the peculiarities of the people and the places she knows best, while at the same time exploring concerns that lend her stories and poems universal appeal. The same is true of With a Hammer for My Heart, a powerful first novel that catapults Lyon into the ranks of other well-respected contemporary novelists.”—The Southern Register
 
“The dialogue in this wonderful story is moving, often funny, and always true to life. YAs will find in Lawanda a revealing picture of a young woman struggling to become her own person in the midst of a loving family whose members think they know what’s best for her.”—School Library Journal

Born in the small, eastern Kentucky coal-mining town of Harlan, George Ella Lyon began her career with Mountain, a chapbook of poems. She has since published many more books in multiple genres and for readers of all ages, but poetry remains at the heart of her work. Many-Storied House is her fifth collection.

While teaching aspiring writers, Lyon asked her students to write a poem based on memories rooted in a house where they had lived. Working on the assignment herself, Lyon began a personal journey, writing many poems for each room. In this intimate book, she strives to answer lingering questions about herself and her family: "Here I stand, at the beginning," she writes in the opening lines of the volume, "with more questions than / answers."

Collectively, the poems tell the sixty-eight-year-long story of the house, beginning with its construction by Lyon's grandfather and culminating with the poet's memories of bidding farewell to it after her mother's death. Moving, provocative, and heartfelt, Lyon's poetic excavations evoke more than just stock and stone; they explore the nature of memory and relationships, as well as the innermost architecture of love, family, and community. A poignant memoir in poems, Many-Storied House is a personal and revealing addition to George Ella Lyon's body of work.

Acclaimed poet George Ella Lyon returns with a brilliant new collection that traces the course of a woman's life from girlhood to mature female wisdom. From the introductory poem, "Little Girl Who Knows Too Much," readers embark on a journey from youth, with its darker moments and denials of voice and story, to a place of strength and power with the poems themselves as a guide.

The collection follows the narrator as she reconnects with her body and recovers memories of violence from early childhood as well as the wilderness of adolescence and of young wife- and motherhood. Gradually, a wider vision appears to her, and she turns to the Great Mother in all her manifestations -- writers, teachers, singers, Earth Herself--to reach new regions of self-knowledge and inner strength. In so doing, the narrator reaches beyond her personal experience and begins a healing process that situates her story within the larger human story.

Alternately witty, charming, tender, thought-provoking, and bracing, Back to the Light expresses a vision of breathtaking breadth and depth. Following the arc of a woman's life, the collection traces the cycles of growth and change the narrator experiences in becoming more herself and finding the spirit to persevere while lyrically demonstrating the power of poetry to help and heal.

" Golden Kite Award winner, 1989 Booklist, Editor's Choice School Library Journal, Best Books of 1988 Publisher's Weekly, Best Books of 1988 Twelve-year-old Amanda Perritt is pitched head-first into adult responsibilities when she has to quit school to care for her newborn brother and invalid mother. She gets an excape, she thinks, when she's offered a trip to stay with her grandmother and her sophisticated Aunt Laura in Memphis. But during the visit, she discovers unexpected parallels between her mother's childhood and her own and comes to understand her own individuality as well as what it means to be part of a family.