William S. Tribell

William S. Tribell was born in Frankfort Kentucky. A perpetual tourist and student of life, He has lived all over the US and the world.

A long time resident of New Orleans Louisiana, Tribell served as state campaign director of Louisiana for Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska in the 2008 US presidential election. After Hurricane Katrina he spent five years in central Europe. His short film and poem "Budapest" was an early catalyst in the still growing protests against the curbed civil liberties, human rights, and restricted freedom of speech and artistic expression legislated by the current Hungarian government. Angie Bowie and others assisted in insuring Tribell's safe return to the states when the circumstances became "pressured" by keeping his situation and evental travel progress public until he was back in the US. The film "Budapest" still finds it's way onto bootleg and pirate sites in Hungary, Ukraine and all across eastern europe and it's on Youtube of course.

He is a multimedia artist. His interests are varied, he is a photographer and journalist, receiving the Lighthouse Media Award in 2015. Tribell received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2016 for poetry, a nomination for 2018 Kentucky Poet Laureate, he was also proposed for induction to the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2018, and his collection “A Dukes Mixture & A Hill of Beans” received sponsorship for submission to the Pulitzer Prize Nomination for 2020 and was accepted. His 2018 short film "Returns", starring Olivia Maxwell is featured in the Los Angeles 2019 Olympus Film Festival.

Tribell's work appears in journals and magazines around the world, including Mensa's Calliope, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel 16 "Apocalachia: Apocalypse in Appalachia", Spudgun #1, and most recently, Stain'd Arts Journal vol. III: "Blood". Many of his poems have been recorded spoken word and with instrumentation by Radio Hall of Fame inductee Gary Burbank, actor John Blyth Barrymore, Red State Update's Travis Harmon and many others. Many he has also adapted into short art films. Maybe most notably "The Day Over to the Belva-Straight Creek Mine" (2011), about an Eastern KY mine explosion read by Appalachian historian Tim Cornett with a score by Nobuo Uematsu featured into the finals in China's Shanghai Tunnels Project film contest and the connected JUE Arts + Music Festival Portland.

He has directed, produced and appeared in many TV and film productions, notably featured in the 2015 film "Poetry Is Dead". Most recently Tribell arranged and recorded the song "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold Me Down" by Ruby Friedman for Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting's Emmy Award winning documentary film, "The Dead Unknown". He is the host of the weekly radio show called Spectrum that airs both terrestrial and live streaming around the world on Appalshop's WMMT 88.7 FM out of Whitesburg Ky.

Tribell is a Kentucky Colonel, nominated for the Kentucky Historical Society's 2017 Thomas D. Clark Award of Excellence and their 2017 Frank R. Levstik Award for Professional Service. He presented his paper and discussion "Tourism in a reconstruction era" at the 2017 Appalachian Studies Association's 40th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference: Extreme Appalachia at Virginia Tech., now archived with Marshall University. Tribell is an ordained minister courtesy of the Universal Life Church of Modesto CA, his favorite color is green, and he thinks sushi is great.