PERFORMING OUR FUTURE:
F O R U M
EMILY HILLIARD
Emily Hilliard is the West Virginia state folklorist at the West Virginia Humanities Council and founder of the West Virginia Folklife Program. She holds an M.A. in folklore from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a B.A. in English and French from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Hilliard worked previously at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and as a folklorist with Sandy Spring Museum/Maryland Traditions. From 2008-2014, she taught literature, creative writing, and cultural courses at the University of Michigan’s New England Literature Program, an intensive place-based living and learning community in the woods of Maine. Hilliard is a 2016 recipient of the American Folklife Center’s Henry Reed Fund Award for a public programming and documentation project highlighting the career of ballad singer Phyllis Marks, and was a 2014 Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives Fellow for research and publication on East Kentucky banjo player Nora E. Carpenter. Her writing about foodways, music, traditional culture, and other work has been published by NPR, Ecotone, UNC Press’ quarterly Southern Cultures, and the Southern Foodways Alliance’s James Beard Award-winning Gravy, among others. She also writes the pie blog Nothing in the House and plays old-time fiddle. Find her work at emilyehilliard.com.