2011-2012 Authors

All Visiting Writers events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required.

 

An Evening with Wes Moore

Friday, September 16, 2011
P. E. Monroe Auditorium, 7:00 pm

Since the publication of his book, The Other Wes Moore, African-American non-fiction author Wes Moore has been slated by Bill Cohen, former secretary of defense, “To become one of the most powerful and influential leaders of this century.” Based on the reviews and success of his writing, there are not many who would disagree with this assertion. Moore is a Rhodes Scholar, youth advocate, Army combat veteran, a former Special Assistant to the White House, and a business leader. As an author, Moore “writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures—poverty, a lack of prospects, the need to respond to violence with greater violence—that propelled the other Wes to his doom.” Publishers Weekly continues, “The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.” This exploration, through his strong leadership and authorial voice, has taken Moore on the road for advocacy of the humanitarian efforts that, in his words, “elevate others unto new worlds.”

 

 

An Evening with Natasha Trethewey

Thursday, October 6, 2011
Belk Centrum, 7:00 pm

 

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey writes "hauntingly beautiful" poetry about tragedy, memory, loss, recovery and home. Her three collections—Domestic Work, Bellocq's Ophelia, and Native Guard—have captivated readers with a powerful presence that resonates on the page. Her book Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010) traces the recovery of her childhood hometown after the devastating natural disaster. Together, all of her work creates a monument for histories that are threatened with being either erased or ignored. This monument is well-supported within her corpus and its many acclamations: Trethewey is the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, as well as the two time recipient of the Lillian Smith Award for Poetry, and of many fellowships including those from the National Endowment for Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the John Simon Guggenhiem Memorial Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

 

An Evening with Edward P. Jones

Thursday, November 3, 2011
Belk Centrum, 7:00 pm

"There's an old chestnut about how when you ask a Southerner a question, you don't get an answer—you get a story." So the Washington Post describes Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward P. Jones. Jones' stories, prompted by questions from his enigmatic and often tragic life experiences, mold his publications: New York Times bestselling novel The Known World (2003) and his short-story collections Lost in the City (2004) and All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006). The literary acclamations awarded to Jones mirror the profound nature of his writing. His life, however, reflects the habits of a recluse more so than one of the most celebrated authors of this generation. Nonetheless, Jones' extraordinary writing has the ability, as novelist Dave Eggers writes, to "stun on every page; there are too many breathtaking lines to count" with "its sweep, its humanity, the unvarnished perfection of its prose." Jones, a MacArthur fellow, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004, which added to his other distinctions including the Hemingway Foundation's 1993 PEN Award, 2003 National Book Critics Award, the 2005 International Dublin Literary Award, and several National Book Award nominations.

 

 

An Evening with Isaac Anderson
(Visiting Writer-in-Residence)

Thursday, February 2, 2012
Belk Centrum, 7:00 pm

The 2012 Visiting Writer-in-Residence, Isaac Anderson, is a recent graduate of Ohio State University, where he received a master's of fine arts in creative nonfiction. Anderson's essays, interviews, reviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Image, Fourth River, The Writers Chronicle, Portland, Ohioana Quarterly, The Voice Project, and elsewhere. In 2010, he co-authored Economy of Love: Creating a Community of Enough, a collection of micro-essays on social and economic justice. Anderson was winner of the prose contest at Ashland University's 2009 literary arts festival, and he has served as a reader for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. His teaching experience includes courses in composition, creative nonfiction writing, and special topics in nonfiction. Taking cues from writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Annie Dillard, and Thomas Merton, Anderson's work often engages honestly and artfully with religious ideas, particularly those of his Judeo-Christian upbringing. He aims to create a dialectic on the page between the mystical and skeptical parts of himself, leaving ample room for readers of different faith traditions and of none. "I can sympathize with the skeptics," he writes, "those who see in such ideas only wish-fulfillment and fertile soil for megalomania. I can sympathize with their skepticism because to some degree I share it, and want to share it, as I do not want the day to come when whatever hope I've placed in the existence of a God is no longer sharpened to a fine point by reasoned doubts." He is currently at work on a book-length "memoir of belief" entitled Seek What You Vow. 

 

 

An Evening with Judy Goldman

Thursday, February 2, 2012
Belk Centrum, 7:00 pm

"Where would writers be without readers?" Judy Goldman asks after the publication of her second novel, The Slow Way Home. Goldman, a North Carolina author of two novels and two poetry collections, has a readership that recognizes what Library Journal calls "masterfully written" work. Her novel Early Leaving was the winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize, Mary Ruffin Poole First Fiction Prize, and a finalist for Southeastern Booksellers Association's Novel of the Year. To add to these accolades, her poetry collections Holding Back Winter and Wanting to Know the End have been awarded with the Gerald Cable Poetry Prize, Roanoke-Chowan Prize, Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize, and Oscar Arnold Young Prize. The author herself received the Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, the Fortner Writer and Community Award for Outstanding Generosity to Other Writers and the Larger Community, and the Beverly D. Clark Award from Queens University. Her many publications also include compilations of poetry, book reviews, and even craft articles that have appeared in Real Simple magazine, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. The Washington Post praised Goldman's "keen eye for the character defining detail." It is this "keen eye" that makes for what Booklist calls Goldman's "brutally honest" and "provocative" writing.

 

 

An Evening with Sandra Cisneros

Thursday, March 1, 2012
Belk Centrum, 7:00 pm

"I'm especially sensitive to the power a word has," Latina novelist Sandra Cisneros says. "It's not a word, it's a way of looking at the world. It's a way of looking at meaning." Cisneros' books, House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek, and Caramelo, all evoke the power of words to tell a meaningful part of America's history through novels, poetry, and short stories. Her work has been translated in over a dozen languages and speaks to readers through the shared stories of culture and memories. The San Francisco Chronicle describes the experience of reading Cisneros' work, which "sometimes wrinkles the nose and scorches the palate" altogether "evoking the sensations of the past in their full complexity." Cisneros' many literary accomplishments include a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the 1985 American Book Award, the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and the Premio Napoli Award for World Literature in 2005.

Sandra Cisneros will also appear on the campus of UNC-Asheville on Friday, March 2, 2012, at 7:00 PM in the Lipinsky Auditorium. The event is sponsored by UNC-A and LRU's Visiting Writers Series. The evening with Sandra Cisneros is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations required.

 

An Afternoon with Lynne Cherry
(The Little Read) 

Saturday, March 31, 2012
P. E. Monroe Auditorium, 12:00 noon

Author Lynne Cherry's career is as colorful as her many publications. As well as being the author and illustrator of over thirty award-winning books for children, she is a filmmaker, teacher, and environmental activist. Her best-selling books, The Great Kapok Tree and A River Ran are inspired by the natural world and encourage the same inspiration in children to make a difference. Her writing, teaching, and lectures are all passionate manifestations of ways everyone, no matter the age, can change the world. Cherry's many awards and distinctions demonstrate her own pursuit of change in both literary and scientific circles. Cherry was selected for Publishers Weekly Green Books for Kids Award, as well as the National Best Books Award for Young Adult Education by USA Booknews, the School Library Journal's Best Books distinction in 2008, the National Parenting Publications Association Gold Award, and the honor of the Green Earth Book Award. Three of Cherry's books were chosen for the list of 40 Best Classic Nature Books of the Century by the American Horticulture Society. In 1993, Cherry was named the Environmental Educator of the Year by the North American Association of Environmental Educators.

 

An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith

Thursday, April 19, 2012
P. E. Monroe Auditorium, 7:00 pm

Alexander McCall Smith is not only the author of No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series, and other internationally best-selling series, but also a respected expert on medical law and bioethics, as well as a founder and member of The Really Terrible Orchestra. The inspiration for his fiction is as unique as the work itself. An old garage that formerly served as a house for migrant workers escaping South African apartheid is one of the sources for such creative inspiration. McCall Smith has converted the Botswana garage into the only opera house in the country as well as developed a new law school at University of Botswana. McCall Smith's eclectic personality and worldly travels extend to his work; the Wall Street Journal hails Smith's "tapestry of extraordinary nuance and richness" in his many publications. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Crime Writers Association's Dagger in the Library Award, the United Kingdom's Author of The Year Award in 2004, and Sweden's Martin Beck Award. He holds honorary doctorates from twelve universities. In 2010, McCall Smith was awarded the Presidential Order of Merit by the President of Botswana.