Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.

Conditions Governing Access

No special access restriction applies.

Researchers may access born digital materials by requesting to view the materials in person by appointment or remotely by contacting the West Virginia & Regional History Center reference department at https://westvirginia.libanswers.com/wvrhc.

Some audiovisual materials (box 25) must be digitized for research access. Researchers must contact the West Virginia & Regional History Center reference department in advance.

Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Irene McKinney, Poet, Papers, A&M 3873, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Deposit from McKinney, Joseph D., 2012 October 18

Biographical / Historical

Poet Irene McKinney (April 20, 1939 – February 4, 2012) grew up on a farm in Belington, Barbour County, West Virginia. She received her bachelor's degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1968, her master's from West Virginia University in 1970, and her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1980. McKinney published several collections of poetry, including The Girl with the Stone in Her Lap (1976); Six O'Clock Mine Report (1989), which was chosen for the Pitt Poetry Series; and Vivid Companion (2004). Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976–2004 was published in 2009. McKinney's work is also included in the anthology Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (2003), edited by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson. Her lyrical poetry is steeped in the rural Appalachian landscape and frequently explores the connections between people and place.

McKinney co-founded the literary journal Trellis with Maggie Anderson and served as an editor for Quarterly West . She also edited the anthology Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia (2002).

Her honors included fellowships, grants, and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, the Utah Arts Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She won the Cincinnati Review Annual Poetry Prize, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Garrison Keillor's National Public Radio program The Writer's Almanac . In 1994 she was appointed poet laureate of West Virginia.

Though a professor emerita, she taught creative writing part-time at West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1991 until her death.

Adapted from the following articles:

"Irene McKinney." Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/irene-mckinney

Slack, James. "Irene McKinney." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 08 February 2024. Web. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1600 .

Scope and Contents

This collection contains the professional papers of West Virginia Poet Laureate Irene McKinney. Notable materials include early drafts of published works; submission materials for various grants, fellowships, publications and contests; and writing exercises from her teaching career.

The collection also features a number of works authored by peers with personal inscriptions to McKinney, including Jayne Anne Phillips, Maggie Anderson, and Aaron Smith.

The materials appear in a variety of formats, including papers, photographs and digital media.

Please note that this collection includes coarse and sexually explicit language.

Organization:

The collection is organized into six series.

Series 1. Correspondence, Photos and Press Clippings, 1950s-2011 (boxes 8-12 and 25): Cards and letters from other writers, professors and publishers, news clippings, book reviews and photographs. Includes a scrapbook assembled by McKinney of personally significant letters and reviews.

Series 2. Publications and Drafts by McKinney, 1950s-2000s (boxes 13-19): Early drafts and final publications of McKinney's work. Several drafts include handwritten notes by fellow poets, most often Maggie Anderson.

Series 3. Teaching Materials and Professional Development, 1960s-2000s (box 20): Materials relating to McKinney's teaching career and career advancement, such as class assignments and exams, submissions for professional fellowship and grant opportunities, faculty notices of appointment, and programs from writing workshops and festivals.

Series 4. Publications and Drafts by Peers, 1960s-2000s (boxes 21-24): Early drafts, sometimes including McKinney's feedback, and final publications, often signed, of McKinney's colleagues and peers. Citation list of separated publications available upon request.

Series 5. Audiovisual and Digital Media (box 25 and digital objects): Video and audio interviews with McKinney, filmed poetry competitions and digital drafts of McKinney's writing.

Series 6. Miscellaneous (boxes 1-7 and 25): Much of the material in boxes 1-7 could likely fit within the above series. Box 25 includes miscellaneous items such as artwork, receipts and a folder of personal papers. Box 27 and oversize folder 1 include miscellaneous posters.

Arrangement

Please note that due to a change in the Center's processing protocol, this collection's materials feature two distict arrangement styles. The first seven boxes of the collection are organized into folders, but not physically sorted into series, while the remaining boxes are organized by series.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• McKinney, Joseph D.
• Poets laureate -- West Virginia
• West Virginia Wesleyan College
• Women poets, American -- 20th century