Finding critical sources about McKinney isn’t as easy as I thought, though I expect to find more after I tackle the thesis below. And I have no access to the resources of an academic library.
Anderson, Maggie. “Irene Durrett McKinney (1939-2012).” Appalachian Journal, vol. 39, no. 3/4, Spring/Summer2012 2012, pp. 228–233. EBSCOhost.
Drennen, Bill. “Interview with Poet Laureate Irene McKinney,” Cultural Conversations. West Virginia Library Commission, 1993.
Haines, Julie. Redefining the Sublime and Repositioning Appalachian Literature: A Closer Look at the Poetry of West Virginia’s Muriel Miller Dressler and Irene McKinney. Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio Dominican University, 2016. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 28 May 2020.
McKinney, Irene. “Ultra-Talk: Poetry in the Fast Lane,” in Come On In: A Chapbook of Lectures on the Craft of Creative Writing. West Virginia Wesleyan College; Welcome Table Press, 2017.
Quillen, Rita Sims. Looking for Native Ground: Contemporary Appalachian Poetry. Appalachian State University, 1989. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xp3n5w. Accessed 29 May 2020. [open access]