Billy Curtis Clark (December 19, 1928 – March 15, 2009) was an American author of 11 books and many poems and short stories, heavily influenced by his childhood growing up in poverty in Kentucky. Biography Clark was born December 29, 1928, and grew up in Catlettsburg in Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression; He was a second cousin of writer Jesse Stuart. He had three brothers and four sisters, and was born to a mother who would wash clothes for extra income, while his father was a shoemaker who bragged of having made it to the second grade. He was living on his own by the time he was 11 years old, doing work to pay for high school, while living in a courthouse building. He would put out miles of trotlines and set traps to catch animals, drying the skins of the animals he caught on the courthouse's clock and selling the furs to make a living. He enlisted in the military and served during the Korean War following his graduation from high school. After completing military service, he enrolled at the University of Kentucky, becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree. Writing Clark claimed to have his first work published when he was 14 years old and a collaborative effort was underway at the time of his death to publish pieces he had written while in college together with the Jesse Stuart Foundation, to be called A Heap of Hills. The foundation has reissued eight of Clark's books that had been originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons and Thomas Y. Crowell Co. Reviewer Hal Borland in The New York Times describes the "ballad-like quality" of his 1960 autobiographical book A Long Row to Hoe, that tells the story of his life up to age 19, growing up in a community that "had more than its share of 'river trash', drunks [and] derelicts" in which the developments of electric lights and indoor plumbing did not "put an end to frontier crudeness and backwater characters". The review laments the structure of the book, but describes it as a "good story, rich in character and details, larded with anecdote and legend". The book was selected by Time magazine as one of its best books of that year, describing it "as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn". Many colleges and universities use the book to introduce students