Billy C. Clark

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 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. The book was selected by Time magazine as one of its best books of that year, describing it "as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn".

Platt and Monk included his Trail of the Hunter's Horn in a 1964 anthology of 30 Greatest Dog Stories that also included Call of the Wild by Jack London as well as John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. The Book of the Month Club offered as a selection his book The Champion of Sourwood Mountain.

Personal The Billy C. Clark Bridge, which crosses the Big Sandy River on U.S. Route 60 to connect Kentucky and Kenova, West Virginia, was named for him in 1992.