Jayne Moore Waldrop

Jayne Moore Waldrop is a Kentucky writer and attorney. She knows her home state from end to end, having grown up in far western Kentucky in a family of displaced Appalachians who returned home often to visit eastern Kentucky. She’s also lived and practiced law in Louisville, and she’s been an enthusiastic member of Lexington’s writing community since moving to central Kentucky.

She is the author of Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series, and Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems, both published by Finishing Line Press. Her linked story collection, Drowned Town, was published in 2021 by University Press of Kentucky through its Fireside Industries imprint, a partnership with Hindman Settlement School.

Waldrop earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Kentucky, and her MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) in 2014 from Murray State University’s low residency program. She is a former book columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal and literary arts liaison at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. She was a writer-in-residence at Rivendell Writers Colony and has attended the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop at Hindman Settlement School, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Waldrop was appointed by the governor to serve two terms on the Kentucky Arts Council and she’s an Art Meets Activism grant recipient from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Her work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Still: The Journal, New Madrid Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Minerva Rising, New Limestone Review, The Paddock Review, Sequestrum, Heartland Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Kudzu, Deep South Magazine, and Kentucky Monthly. Her stories were selected as Judge’s Choice in the 2016 Still Journal Fiction Contest; finalists for the 2015 Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, the 2016 Tillie Olsen Fiction Award, and 2017 Still Journal Fiction Contest; and honorable mention in the 2014 AWP Intro Journals Project. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology.

She and her family live in Lexington.