Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

January 18, 2007 issue

Anthony Grooms Kicks Off Spring Visiting Writers Series January 25

Story by Carly Pieper

Anthony Grooms is a writer and arts administrator who is well known in the Atlanta area for his work in organizing arts events and for his support and encouragement of fellow writers.

He will kick off the spring offerings in Appalachian’s Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, January 25. Grooms’ presentation begins at 7:30 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Table Rock Room. Admission is free, and books will be available for sale and signing. Grooms also will read from his work and answer questions during a presentation on January 25 from 12:15 to 1:00 p.m. at Caldwell Community College’s Watauga Campus.

Grooms graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1978 with a BA in theatre and speech. His concentration was in playwriting, and a student theatre group produced several of his plays. He is now a creative writing professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

Though the subject matter of his work varies, Grooms’ most significant writing focuses on his characters struggling with the insecurity of the Civil Rights movement.

Grooms’ stories and poems have been published in African American Review, Callaloo, George Washington Review and Crab Orchard Review. He is the author of the poetry collection Ice Poems, the story collection Trouble No More and the novel Bombingham that takes place in 1963 during the height of the Civil Rights tumult in Alabama. His awards and honors include the Lillian Smith Book Award in 1996 and 2002, the Sokalov Scholarship from the Lamar lectureship from Wesleyan College and an Arts Administration Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Grooms had been on the radar screen for a visiting writer for several years because of his work and also because he is a personal friend of Joseph Bathanti, a professor in the English department at ASU.

The spring 2007 Visiting Writers Series is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as by the Appalachian State University Foundation; Appalachian’s Offices of Academic Affairs, Multicultural Student Development, and Cultural Affairs; the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, The Summer Reading Program, the University Bookstore, The Appalachian Journal, and The Richard T. Barker Friends of the University Library. Business sponsors are The Gideon Ridge Inn and The Red Onion Restaurant. Community sponsors include John and Marjorie Idol and The High Country Writers. The Visiting Writers Series is named in honor of Hughlene Bostian Frank, class of 1968, trustee and generous supporter of Appalachian State University.

Parking is free on campus after 5:00 p.m.

For more information about Appalachian’s Visiting Writers Series or creative writing program, call 828-262-2337 or click to www.visitingwriters.appstate.edu.