Dr. Edwina Pendarvis earned a B. A. in English from the University of South Florida in 1967, an M.A. in Gifted Education from the University of South Florida in 1971, and an Ed.D. from the University of Kentucky in 1983. She joined the Marshall faculty in 1979 and became a nationally-recognized authority on gifted education, serving as the College of Education and Professional Development’s Coordinator of the Gifted Graduate Education Program. She also served as Acting Director of the John R. Hall Center for Academic Excellence, which houses the Yeager Scholars and Honors Program, for a year before her retirement as Professor Emerita from Marshall. Dr. Pendarvis served as a contributing editor of Roeper Review: A Journal on Gifted Education. She received the award for Outstanding Service to Gifted Youth from the West Virginia Association for Gifted and Talented. Additionally, Dr. Pendarvis is a recognized and highly regarded author of Appalachian poetry and prose who has won numerous awards for her work. She served as a member of the Board of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation and as editor of the Journal of Appalachian Studies. She wrote a series of biographies of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature in dual-language editions published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2010 and 2011. In 2013, she was awarded the Pearl S. Buck Award by the West Virginia Education Association. In 2015, Blair Mountain Press published her collection of poetry, entitled Ghost Dance Poems. In 2016, she co-edited Appalachian Murders and Mysteries with James Gifford, which was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation, and co-authored a book with Craig and Aimee Howley entitled Out of Our Minds: Turning the Tide of Anti-Intellectualism in American Schools, published by Prufrock Press. Her book Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia, was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in 2023. Her publications in 2024 and 2025 include three articles for West Virginia’s Goldenseal magazine, one on Johnny Fullen, Matewan, WV’s first Black mayor; one on Phyllis Moore, dedicated promoter of West Virginia literature; and another on a group of women–Black and white– the “Piecemakers,” who for many years have met on Sunday afternoons to work on quilting projects.