WCU Spring Literary Festival brochure.
CULLOWHEE–– Western Carolina University’s Ninth Annual Spring Literary Festival kicked off Sunday evening with an innovative simulcast conversation with Elizabeth Kostova, best-selling author of The Historian, a novel that follows the historical search for Dracula.
The event was the first in a series of discussions, readings, and forums that showcase a star-packed line up of writers over the course of the next week.
“This year’s lineup has three features I’m especially excited about. We have an unprecedented number of bestselling and award-winning novelists, as well as two outstanding environmental nonfiction writers,” said festival organizer Mary Adams. “Finally, it will be wonderful to have all three North Carolina Poets Laureate at the same event. We have a tradition of balancing wonderful regional writers with writers from other regions and cultures, and this year’s group represents the best of both.”
It’s hard to name a headline act at a literary festival featuring three of North Carolina’s poet laureates–– Cathy Smith Bowers, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and Fred Chapell–– but Kostova’s appearance certainly lent some big-name caché to the festival. The Historian, a painstakingly researched novel, was the fastest-selling debut novel in American publishing history.
Kostova told Tuck Reader that she keeps careful track of the relationship between fiction and history in her books.
“I hugely value ‘accuracy’,” Kostova said. “In other words, as much accuracy as one can ever attain in the study of history–as a part of historical fiction, because as a reader I like to be able to learn from the historical fiction I read myself. I try to be transparent about the moments when I invent things to square my plot or develop my characters. I seldom invent historical details, and if I invent an event or a character, I try to be obvious about that. Most of my characters are fictional, in fact, and most of the historical backgrounds, events, and cultural details against which they move are carefully researched.”
It’s that type of insight that the WCU Spring Literary Festival events schedule offers book-lovers, writers, and literary star-gazers this week.
Authors David Gessner and Alan Weisman will add an environmental flavor to the festival on Thursday, with discussions about their latest books dealing with the way humans impact the natural world. Weisman’s The World Without Us offers a glimpse of earth devoid of humans, while Gessner’s new book, The Tarball Chronicles, is a kind of human journey through the Gulf Oil Spill.
Gessner offered this preview of his discussion at 4 p.m. on Thursday:
Last summer I traveled down to the Gulf of Mexico to write about the oil spill and bird migration for the Natural Resources Defense Council. As I stayed in the Gulf the original article grew into a series of blog posts– http://www.onearth.org/intothegulf –and those posts gradually grew into a book, The Tarball Chronicles. In the end, the writing was not just about the oil spill itself, but about larger connections: connections between how we have chosen to live and the consequences of those choices; between what we are doing now and our future; between our need for fuel and our love of nature; between the need for sacrifice and the love of luxury.
The WCU Spring Literary Festival prides itself on representing regional literature in the ranks of its authors. In addition to the heavyweight line up of North Carolina poets, Kentucky author Frank X Walker, Affrilachian poet, will read from his latest book and answer questions about his work as an editor, poet, and historian.
Walker, who will read Wednesday at 4 p.m., had this to say about what Affrilachia means:
Affrilachia is way of thinking about the region that forces others to let go of the traditional stereotypes and caricatures of the region and allow a broader more inclusive definition to take shape.The Appalachian experience is different from the Southern experience for African Americans primarily around notions of invisibility and the need to reinterpret the published history, lives and culture of the region.
Learn more about the 2011 WCU Spring Literary Festival at the event Web site here.
