Cultures at Risk Presenter Biographies
Sharyn McCrumb
and Jack Hinshelwood
Appalachian writing and traditional ballads
Jack Hinshelwood began playing Appalachian and bluegrass music on the guitar in 1972. A resident of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, Jack’s original compositions include songs based on regional historical events such as the 1912 courthouse massacre in Hillsville, Virginia, and the 1946 mining disaster in the Great Valley Mines of McCoy, Virginia.
He has won numerous music competitions including the guitar championship at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee; the Galax Fiddler’s Convention Guitar Contest; and first place in the Wayne Henderson Guitar Championship. Jack’s first recording, Dark Run, was praised by Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine as “An enjoyable collection of bluegrass, oldtime and folk songs,” and Jack was called “A fine quick-picker with a weathered, welcoming voice.”
Since 1994 Jack has been playing guitar and fiddle with Celtibillies, a four-member group that performs a mixture of Celtic and Appalachian music. Jack has released two critically-acclaimed recordings with Celtibillies, who also appeared at the 37th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.
Jack also tours widely with Sharyn McCrumb to promote her Ballad novels where he performs the ballads that are referenced in her novels. He and Sharyn jointly produced a recording of the songs from Sharyn’s first ballad novel, If Ever I Return Pretty Peggy O.
McCrumb is best known for her Appalachian “Ballad ” novels, including New York Times best sellers She Walks These Hills and The Rosewood Casket, which deal with the issue of the vanishing wilderness, and New York Times notable books The Ballad of Frankie Silver, the story of the first woman hanged for murder in the state of North Carolina, and The Songcatcher, a genealogy in music. Ghost Riders (Dutton 2003), is an account of the Civil War in the Appalachians and its echoes in the region today.
McCrumb’s honors include: The 2003 Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature given by the East Tennessee Historical Society; AWA Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award; Chaffin Award for Achievement in Southern Literature; Plattner Award for Short Story; Virginia Book of the Year nomination; AWA Best Appalachian Novel; SEBA Best Novel nomination; St. Andrews College’s Flora MacDonald Award; and the Sherwood Anderson Short Story Award. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages, and she has served as writer-in-residence at King College, Bristol, Tennessee, and at Shepherd College in West Virginia. In 2001 she taught fiction at the WICE Conference in Paris.
McCrumb, a graduate of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with an MA from Virginia Tech, has lectured on her work at Oxford University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Bonn, Germany, and at universities and libraries throughout the country. McCrumb lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge.