Martha Billips

Martha Billips currently serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Transylvania University, her alma mater. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, where she wrote a doctoral dissertation on the Kentucky novels of Harriette Simpson Arnow. She has published and spoken widely on Arnow and contributed the essay “Harriette Simpson Arnow: A Writer’s Life” to the 2015 collection Kentucky Women: Their Lives and Times. Additional research interests include the work of Lee Smith and that of other star Appalachian women writers “with accents.” A native of Pikeville, Kentucky, Dr. Billips currently lives in Lexington.