Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
March 27, 2008 issue
Authors of Creative Nonfiction, Poetry Close Spring Visiting Writers Series
Story by Anna Oakes
The spring 2008 series of the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University winds down with two renowned authors in early April.
Karen Salyer McElmurray presents a reading of her work on Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the Plemmons Student Union Table Rock Room. Marilyn Kallet reads her work in the Table Rock Room on Thursday, April 10, at 7:30 p.m.
McElmurray has been a landscaper, a casino employee and a sporting towel factory worker, but she now makes a living as a writer and teacher of writing. She is an assistant professor in the creative writing department at Georgia College and State University.
“Our faculty have been aware of her career and award-winning work for many years now,” said Susan Weinberg, a member of the English faculty at ASU.
In 2004, she published Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, a memoir about giving up her son for adoption and the search for him as an adult. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described it as “a moving meditation on loss and memory and the rendering of truth and story.” The book was the recipient of the 2003 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and is a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book.
McElmurray’s debut novel, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, published in 1999, was winner of the 2001 Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Her work in both fiction and nonfiction has also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the North Carolina Arts Council.
During her visit to Appalachian, she also will speak to a regional gathering of foster and adoptive parents.
“The first-hand experiences of a birth mother, which are depicted with great bravery and beauty in Karen’s book, is a perspective that foster and adoptive parents are anxious to hear,” Weinberg said. “We’re pleased that our series, in conjunction with the North Carolina Arts Council, is able to provide this outreach event to foster and adoptive families in our region.”
Marilyn Kallet closes the Visiting Writers Series with a reading of her poetry.
Kallet was born in Montgomery, Ala., and grew up in New York. She has published her poetry in more than 45 poetry reviews and anthologies. Her works include In the Great Night (1981), How To Get Heat Without Fire (1996), One For Each Night: Chanukah Tales and Recipes (2004) and Circe, After Hours (2005). She has edited Honest Simplicity in William Carlos Williams' "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (1985) and A House of Gathering: Poets on May Sarton's Poetry (1993) and has co-edited Worlds in Our Words: Contemporary American Women Writers (1996), Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival (1999), The Art of College Teaching: 28 Takes (2005), The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (2007).
Kallet is also the author of Jack the Healing Cat (2007), a children’s book. She has written scholarly articles on the poetry of Wiliams Carlos Williams, May Sarton, Joy Harjo, Denise Levertov, Tess Gallagher, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Monica Alvi and Wendy Rose.
Kallet is professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She is a much sought-after reader in the Knoxville community and an avid supporter and participant in the Knoxville Poetry Slam, a grassroots performance group. She has earned numerous academic and literary awards including the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in Poetry in 1989, the YWCA Outstanding Woman in the Arts in 2000, the East Tennessee Literary Hall of Fame in Poetry in 2005 and a Hodges Chair for Distinguished Teaching, 2003-2006.
In addition to her reading, Kallet will present a craft talk titled Poetry as Bridge to Writing Children’s Books at 3:30 p.m. on April 10 in the Table Rock Room.
What: Karen McElmurray reading
Date: Thursday, April 3
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Table Rock Room, Plemmons Student Union, ASU
Cost: Free
What: Marilyn Kallet reading
Date: Thursday, April 10
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Table Rock Room, Plemmons Student Union, ASU
Cost: Free