Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:27:33 +0000
From:
Subject: Southern authors to promote literacy in Chatham County
Three award-winning Southern authors will discuss the inspirations for their writing at an April 21 luncheon to benefit the Chatham County Literacy Council.
Doris Betts, Lee Smith and Randall Kenan also will take questions and sign books during the Authors for Literacy event at Governors Club. The program will begin at 11:30 a.m. with a silent auction featuring items ranging from art by well-known local artists to an adult tricycle to dinners at popular area restaurants.
Betts is a longtime Chatham County Literacy Council supporter and tutor who served on the group=E2=80=99s board of directors and now is on the advisory board. The renowned Southern author of six novels and three story collections is a three-time winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Fiction and a winner of the Southern Book Award for =E2=80=9CSouls Raised from the Dead.=E2=80=9D Betts, who lives in Pittsboro, taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill for 32 years.
Smith, a resident of Hillsborough, is publishing her 11th novel, =E2=80=9C Mr. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger,=E2=80=9D this spring. Her other works include =E2=80=9COn Agate Hill,=E2=80=9D which was set in this area, and =E2=80=9CThe Last Girls,=E2=80=9D which won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She taught creative writing at North Carolina State University for 19 years.
Kenan, who studied with Betts, has written several books, including =E2=80==9CA Visitation of Spirits=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9CLet the Dead Bury Their Dead.=E2=80=9D His fiction is centered on what it=E2=80=99s like to be black and gay in the rural South. The UNC-Chapel Hill English professor is a winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and the North Carolina Award for Literature.
The deadline for registering for Authors for Literacy is April 14. Half of the $50 per person fee will be a tax-deductible charitable contribution to the Chatham County Literacy Council. To register online and pay via PayPal, go to http://chathamliteracy.org/upcomingevents.html. To register by mail, write a check to CCLC and send it to CCLC, P.O. Box 1696, Pittsb=
oro, NC 27312. Please include the names of those attending.
For more information, contact Brenda Rogers at 968-0833 or Karen Kolias at 967-6676.
The Chatham County Literacy Council is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and a United Way-affiliated agency. It works in partnership with Central Carolina Community College to enlist volunteers and to provide free tutoring services for adults in Chatham County.