Ken Tucker- retired Professor of English, who taught for 31 years at Murray State University. My academic specialties were Shakespeare and English Renaissance literature.  Through the years I have written a number of book reviews and academic articles, and was once president of the Kentucky Philological Association.  Since my early retirement, I have had two academic books published. Eliot Ness and the Untouchables and Shakespeare and Jungian Psychology.  Afterward I turned my attention to fiction and have five published novels. The first was A Wilderness of Tigers, based on the bloody rampage through Kentucky of the Harpe brothers in the 1790's. The Grave and the Figure Eight is a retelling of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, set in Kentucky. A Kentucky Colonel in King Arthur's Court  is a light-hearted humorous fantasy. The Fall of the House of Spade is based upon an actual murder that occurred in Canton, Kentucky, set against that town's decline as a center of riverboat trade.  The Madonna of Darkness and Shadows is a horror story as well as a religious allegory, set in Louisville at Derby time.  As you can see, most of my fiction concerns this state.  By the time of the festival, I should have another novel published, a tale of the Civil War in Kentucky, tentatively entitled I Pray the Lord my Soul to Keep. (I suppose most Kentucky writers have to try at least one Civil War novel!)