About Dean and Nina

The Cornetts split their time between their residence in Alaska and their retreat in Kentucky.

Dean Cornett is a videographer and video-documentary producer. Much of his filming is done where he lives. His Alaska projects tend to concentrate on the land and the animals. In Kentucky, he directs his efforts toward recording the history and culture of the Appalachian area. His most recent documentary, Appalachian Chair Caning and Story Telling, began airing on Kentucky PBS stations on 5 December 2018. It follows two other documentaries that KET airs periodically. Sugar Cane, Sorghum, and Stir-offs, ​a documentary about molasses making, began airing in April 2015.  American Chestnut: Appalachian Apocalypse, which covers the history of the American chestnut and the early-twentieth-century blight that virtually wiped it out, began airing in 2010 and is running or has run on a number of PBS stations.  In addition, Dean has, airing on various cable channels, a documentary about the vicious nature of the Civil War in the Southern Appalachians (Guerrillas and Bushwhackers: A Different Civil War),  another about the return of black bears to Eastern Kentucky (The Bears of Kingdom Come) and a number of others about disappearing mountain skills such as iron-working and hog killing.

Nina Cornett is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy – the highest position attainable in the Navy hierarchy by a non-political-appointee. During her tenure with the Navy, she was responsible for overseeing automation projects for US navy ships and managed a two-billion-dollar annual budget. She is the author of Alaskan Summer, a novel published in hardcover by Avalon books and in paperback by Dell publishing. She has also written magazine articles, and has researched and written scripts for her husband’s documentaries, including American Chestnut, Sugar Cane, Sorghum, and Stir-offs,  and Appalachian Chair Caning and Story Telling, the documentaries currently airing on PBS stations. She is presently working on a memoir of her mother’s death, tentatively titled Fault Lines and Fractures, and is in the beginning stages of development for a mystery set in Alaska.

In addition, Nina served a term as a member of the Kentucky Supreme Court's Access to Justice Commission.

Email either Cornett at ngcornett@aol.com, or use the contact form on this site. 

Besides their creative endeavors, the Cornetts established and are officers of a non-profit corporation, the principal mission of which is to improve the environment and economic conditions of Eastern Kentuckians. Click here to visit that web-site.