author
Florence Lilian Bush
1865–1972
A Michigan-born writer and artist, she is best remembered for co-authoring Goose Creek Folks, a 1912 novel set in the Kentucky mountains. Her long life also included work as an art teacher and drawing supervisor, showing a creative range that stretched well beyond fiction.
1 Audiobook
Goose Creek Folks: A Story of the Kentucky Mountains
by Isabel Graham Bush, Florence Lilian Bush
About the author
Born in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1865, Florence Lilian Bush was an American writer, artist, and teacher. She studied at Battle Creek College, Michigan State Normal School, and the Art Institute of Chicago, building a background in both education and the arts.
Bush worked as a supervisor of drawing in public schools and also taught art, including work connected with Berea College in Kentucky. That experience likely helped shape her interest in regional life and everyday communities.
She is most closely associated with Goose Creek Folks: A Story of the Kentucky Mountains (1912), written with her sister Isabel Graham Bush. The novel reflects an early-20th-century fascination with Appalachian life, and her wider career suggests a woman deeply engaged with art, teaching, and storytelling across more than a century of life.