Libby Falk Jones: Writer, Poet, Teacher, Photographer

Libby Falk Jones is a life-long writer of poems, stories, and essays.  She’s authored or co-authored four books of poems, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than 25 journals and anthologies. She’s a member of Bluegrass Writers Studio (Eastern Kentucky University) and a past president of Kentucky State Poetry Society.

She holds degrees from Duke University (BA, history) and Stony Brook University (MA and PhD, English).  An Emerita Professor of English at Berea College, she’s taught a wide range of courses in writing and literature, including creative writing, contemplative writing, experimental writing, nature writing, journalism and technical writing, and critical and research writing.  She’s taken students to study writing, literature, and photography in the Southwest and abroad (Austria, Denmark, France, and Turkey) as well as serving a term as Visiting Lecturer at National University of Ireland in Galway. 

At Berea, she founded and directed the Center for Effective Communication and the Center for Learning, Teaching, Communication, and Research.  She also led several faculty development programs, including Communication Across the College and the Inner Landscape of Teaching and Learning.  She has published and presented widely on writing centers, writing across the curriculum, teaching writing, contemplative education, and faculty development.

Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries in Kentucky and Louisiana and are part of the permanent Healing Art collections at several hospitals in the Bluegrass and in Baton Rouge.  “Begin Beneath Your Feet: a Journey Through Four Lands,” an exhibit of more than 100 of her photographs from Japan, India, Iceland, and Ireland, was featured in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, 2020-22. 

Currently, she co-directs Coming of Age, a grant-funded writing project for Kentucky women over 60 and serves as a writing coach at Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshops (photojournalism) and as Writer Workshops Coordinator for Shadelandhouse Modern Press. She also guest-lectures in classes and leads workshops for local, regional, and national groups, including New Opportunity School for Women and NCTE’s Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning. She lives with her husband, Roger, also a writer, in Berea, KY, where she is working on a collection of poems and photographs, a new collection of poems, and a book on teaching.