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

Morgan Mania

Three Ways To Catch Best-Selling Author Robert Morgan in the High Country

Story by Sam Calhoun

Bestselling author, historian, professor and poet Robert Morgan is enjoying success these days, having just published his new book Boone, A Biography while still receiving praises for his national bestseller Gap Creek—2000 winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection. Morgan is traveling all over America in support of Boone, A Biography, and he’s carved out ample time for some appearances in and around the High Country, so there’s no excuse not to find one event that fits your schedule.

Brief Bio
Morgan is a native of Hendersonville, a place where he first fell in love with writing poetry and fiction. He wrote his first story in sixth grade and fell in love with character development and history.

Morgan started out studying engineering and applied mathematics at North Carolina State University, but transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study English, graduating in 1965. In 1968, Morgan received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
After being befriended by a writing teacher at N.C. State who instilled Morgan with the self-confidence to put the pen to the page, Morgan started to publish short stories and poems in the late 1960s.

Morgan went to Cornell in 1971 and wrote poems for nine years, publishing three poetry books. In 1980, though, Morgan returned to writing fiction and published his first book of short stories, The Blue Valleys, in 1989. Morgan also published three more books of poetry around that time—At the Edge of Orchard Country, 1987; Sigodin, 1990; and Green River, 1991.

Morgan received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1974, 1981 and 1987; a Guggenheim fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1988; and the James G. Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the North Carolina Literature Award in 1991.

In 1992, Morgan published The Mountains Won’t Remember Us, a volume of stories and a novella. In 1993, he published Good Measure, a collection of essays and interviews on poetry, and in 1994, he published the novel The Hinterlands. Morgan’s novel The Truest Pleasure was listed by Publisher’s Weekly as a notable book in 1995 and was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. His story “The Balm of Gilead Tree” was included in the 1997 O. Henry Awards anthology.

In spring 1998, Morgan served as McGee Visiting Professor of Writing at Davidson College and, in the past, has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Writing at ASU. Morgan has also served as a visiting writer at Furman University, Duke University and East Carolina University.

In May 2007, he received the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

And now, Morgan is coming back to the High Country in three different capacities in the next four months.

ASU Spring Commencement
On Saturday, May 10, at 9:00 a.m. Morgan will be the keynote speaker for the ASU College of Arts and Sciences spring commencement. The event is free and open to all community members—knowing a graduate is not a requirement. For more information, call 828-262-2000.

Together We Read
For 2008, Together We Read— an annual program from July to December in 21 western North Carolina counties that encourages adults and students to read the same book and participate in book discussion programs—will focus on Morgan’s recently released Boone, A Biography. More than 100 libraries, schools and bookstores across western North Carolina will stock the book, and more than 60 book discussions and lectures are scheduled from July to December at various locations within the 21-county district, including some that feature Morgan himself. The Together We Read programs are free.

The majority of the programs in 2008 will begin in August, according to Together We Read Co-Founder Rob Neufeld, because the paperback version of Boone, A Biography will not come out until then. In the meantime, many participating libraries and schools are stocking the book in hard cover for participants to borrow, including the Watauga County Public Library and ASU’s Belk Library.
For more information on the program, click to www.togetherweread.org.

Daniel Boone Days
Daniel Boone Days—a new two-day festival for the Town of Boone on September 4, 5 and 6—is a program site for Together We Read because Morgan is scheduled to speak at the event on Friday, September 5, on the ASU campus. Tickets are $2.

After an open house and social kicks off Daniel Boone Days on Thursday, September 4, Morgan will host a symposium on Daniel Boone from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and an open house from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Daniel Boone experts will join Morgan on stage as he talks about the real Daniel Boone and his time in the High Country. An exact location for the event is yet to be determined.

Daniel Boone Days continues with Fess Parker Wine Dinners at The Gamekeeper and Casa Rustica on Friday evening. On Saturday, the inaugural Daniel Boone Chase—a foot race to the top of Howard’s Knob and back down—takes place, followed by a Guinness World Record-setting event and a music and cultural festival at Horn in the West. The Pioneer Festival at the Horn features a square dance, arts and crafts vendors, a presentation on Daniel Boone’s plott hounds, the Watauga County Arts Council’s Fiddlers’ Competition Finals, storytelling, a Daniel Boone Look-Alike Contest and live music from Boone’s Lost Ridge Band, Virginia’s Larry Keel & Natural Bridge and MerleFest standouts The Waybacks.

For more information and ticket prices, click to www.danielboonedays.com or call 828-264-2262.

For more information on Morgan, click to www.robert-morgan.com.