THE SHORT OF IT

Anna Kline is a songwriter, musician, and poet based in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, who specializes in partnerships and Southern culture projects.

Raised on a steady diet of three-part harmonies and Memphis soul, Anna explores the world through music, words, photography, and video, facilitating culture & heritage projects and programs that aid in preserving and promoting Southern music and folkways.

A self-professed Southern culture junkie, Anna grew up in North Mississippi in the small town of Hernando, located between the Chickasaw river bluffs of Memphis and Mississippi Delta farmlands—an area with a complex history that yielded its legendary food and arts culture.  

Anna spent three years as Business Development Director of the International Bluegrass Music Association, where she played an integral role in organizing its yearly event, IBMA World of Bluegrass, working directly with sponsors and partners. During her time there, she co-coordinated the first-ever Black String Band Symposium and helped spearhead the Martin Guitar Picking for the Prize Flatpicking Contest. She also oversaw a successful Grammy Foundation grant application, which was awarded to the IBMA for the digitization and preservation of endangered audio and video materials.

Anna is now redirecting her focus back to freelance projects and diving back into creative life.

She is currently coordinating two folkways projects for the Gateway Regional Arts Center, including an oral history project, The Sweet Story of Ruth Hunt and Pulled Cream Candy, and a music folkways project, The Gateway to America’s Songs: 250 Years of Bluegrass and Folk Music in Kentucky.

She continues sponsorship and partnership work with Ireland’s premier music industry conference, Your Roots Are Showing, and works part-time with IBMA.

She is a Kentucky Arts Council Community Scholar, and her duo, Swift Silver, is a proud member of the Kentucky Arts Council Performing Artist Directory.

Anna continues to explore the diversity of the Southern experience in the Appalachian region through speaking and writing opportunities, teaching workshops, and regional performances.

She recently completed the year-long Poetry Gauntlet workshop at The Carnegie Center and is in the midst of a co-writing album project called Thinking Like a Mountain.

In 2025, she will appear at a series of reading events for the Women of Appalachia Project: Women Speak, celebrating Volume 10, to perform the poetry and songs included in the published compilation.

This July, Anna is part of the faculty of the upcoming Hindman Songwriters Weekend. She is also proud to have been selected to attend Hindman’s Appalachian Writers Workshop 2025 to study poetry.