Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 29, 1912 – Joy Bale Boone

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From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Joy (Field) Bale Boone, poet, was born October 29, 1912, in Chicago to William Sydney and Edith (Overington) Field. She was educated at the Chicago Latin School and the Roycemore School for Girls in Evanston, Illinois. Boone has resided in Kentucky for more than half a century, principally in Elizabethtown (1937-75) and in Elkton. She was married to physician Shelby Garnett Bale from 1934 until his death in 1972; they were the parents of six children. In 1975 she married George Street Boone, an attorney, and moved to Elkton.

Boone began her literary career in Kentucky as a reviewer for the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1945. She edited two collections of Contemporary Kentucky Poets (1964, 1967). In 1964 she founded the literary magazine Approaches and served as its editor for eleven years. Since relinquishing the editorship to Wade Hall, she has served on the editorial board for the journal now known as Kentucky Poetry Review. Boone's long narrative poem The Storm's Eye: a Narrative in Verse Celebrating Cassius Marcellus Clay, Man of Freedom 1810-1903, was published in 1974 by the Kentucky Poetry Press, and was reprinted in the tenth anniversary issue of Approaches. Her Never Less Than Love was published in 1972. Individual poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals, and she is one of two Kentucky poets featured in the award-winning video Poetry: a Beginner's Guide, produced at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green .

For several years, Boone served as president of Friends of Kentucky Libraries . She has chaired the Robert Penn Warren Committee at Western Kentucky University since its inception in 1987. In 1990 she was appointed to the board of the Gaines Humanities Center at the University of Kentucky , and she chairs the endowment committee for the University Press of Kentucky. Boone's awards include the Distinguished Kentuckian Award from Kentucky Educational Television in 1974 and the Sullivan Award from the University of Kentucky in 1969.

MARY ELLEN MILLER, Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Boone, Joy Bale. The Storm's Eye : A Narrative in Verse Celebrating Cassius Marcellus Clay, Man of Freedom, 1810-1903. Louisville: Kentucky Poetry, 1974. Print. Poets of Kentucky Ser. ; No. 7.
PS3552 .A452 S8, Young Library - 5th Floor

Boone, Joy Bale., and Friends of Kentucky Libraries. Contemporary Kentucky Poetry. Elizabethtown?: Friends of Kentucky Libraries, 1964. Print.
PS571.K4 C6 1964, Special Collections Research Center

Boone, Joy Bale. Even without Love : Poems. S.l.: S.n., 1992. Print.
PS3552.O644 E940 1992, Special Collections Research Center