Brandon Ray Kirk has dedicated his life to the collection, preservation, and promotion of the history and culture of Central Appalachia. A scholar, museum director, professor, and author, he currently serves as the executive director of the Big Sandy Heritage Center Museum in Pikeville, Kentucky, where he works closely with city and county government, as well as tourism agencies, to highlight the heritage of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. His early career consisted of special collections work at Marshall University’s Morrow Library as well as teaching high school AP History courses and writing local interest features for newspapers and journals in West Virginia and Tennessee while collaborating on major projects with such notables as the late Jim Comstock, popular editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly, and the late John Hartford, Nashville singer/songwriter and TV personality. The latter partnership was longstanding and garnered a feature in Smithsonian magazine and contributions to the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie. Kirk thereafter earned a M.A. in history with an emphasis on the U.S. South and Appalachia, specifically crime and old-time music, from Marshall University, during which time he authored a wildly popular thesis: “Desperate and Determined Men: West Virginia’s Lincoln County Feud.” He is a former associate professor of history at a West Virginia community and technical college where he chaired the institution’s most important committee, coordinated a program, attended conferences throughout the United States, founded Appalachian Heritage Day, and received the college’s top faculty award. By governor’s appointment, he served on West Virginia’s Sesquicentennial Civil War Commission. He is the author of Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy (Pelican Publishing Company in New Orleans), a feud book derived from twenty-plus years of intense research in West Virginia and Kentucky, which culminated in his choice as One of West Virginia’s 55 Good Things, publication in The Kentucky Explorer and Goldenseal magazines, as well as a lecture tour at such prestigious venues as the West Virginia State Archives in Charleston, WV, and the Scarborough Lecture Series in Shepherdstown, WV. Kirk has been featured in The New Yorker. He is an officer of the West Virginia Historical Society, a Board member of the Eastern Kentucky Humanities Commission, a Board member of the Kentucky Genealogical Society, a Board member of the Devil Anse Hatfield Homeplace Museum, and is a member of Small Museums Association, West Virginia Association of Museums, Golden Key International Honour Society, Kappa Delta Pi, Kentucky Council on Archives, Kentucky Museum Heritage Alliance, and Phi Alpha Theta. He is a past officer of West Virginia Writers and is a past member of the American Historical Association, Appalachian Studies Association, National Council for the Social Studies, IOOF, and the Southern Historical Association.

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