Public Outcry is an anti-Mountaintop Removal artistic collaboration that brings together music, words and images to educate people about this extreme coal mining method.

Silas House
Silas House is the author of three novels: Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo, as well as the nonfiction book Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, co-edited with Howard. He was given the 2009 Helen Lewis Award for Community Service for his work in the fight against MTR. His fourth novel, Eli The Good, will be released in Fall 2009. He lives at Lily in Laurel County.

Jason Howard
Jason Howard is a writer, editor and musician. His works have appeared in The Louisville Review, Equal Justice Magazine, Paste, Kentucky Living, and other publications. He is the editor of two MTR-related books: the forthcoming anthology We All Live Downstream and (with House) Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal. He plays piano, autoharp and bass. Jason is from Bell County, Kentucky.

Jessie Lynne Keltner
Jessie Lynne Keltner works as a nursing home social worker in London, Kentucky. She sings and plays autoharp, fiddle, and other instruments, and has written songs, poems, and stories. In addition to Public Outcry, she performs with the Gabbard Sisters and the Cosmic Mamaws, and plays violin in the community orchestra. Her sister is writer Anne Shelby, also a member of Public Outcry.

Kate Larken
A writer of songs, plays and books, and an activist, educator, producer and publisher (MotesBooks.com), Kate Larken's career is a busy intersection of communication, education and the arts. A former teacher and journalist, Kate has been playing guitar and writing songs for nearly 50 years, contributing her energy, talent and time to environmental and civil rights activism for much of that period. A native of west Kentucky's rural farmlands and, later, a transplant into the great nation of Appalachia, Kate currently lives on the Ohio River in a big old city with deep working-class roots. 

George Ella Lyon
George Ella Lyon is the author of many books for children and adults, most recently Sleepsong and My Friend, the Starfinder (picture books); Don't You Remember? A Memoir, and With a Hammer for My Heart (novel). In addition to her work against mountaintop removal, she is active in the peace movement. Originally from Harlan County, she now lives in Lexington.

Anne Shelby
Anne Shelby is the author of a collection of poems (Appalachian Studies); plays, including her one-woman show, The Lone Pilgrim: Songs and Stories of aunt Molly Jackson; essays (Can A Democrat Get into Heaven?); and children's books, most recently, The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales and The Man Who Lived in a Hollow Tree. Anne lives at her family's homeplace in Clay County, where she writes a weekly newspaper column.