On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, ETSU will celebrate creative writing with a two-day festival that will include readings and workshops from visiting writers Bianca Lynn Spriggs (poetry), Courtney Stevens (young adult fiction), and Mark Powell (fiction). Topping off the festival on Wednesday evening (April 11th) will be a reading by the talented Joy Harjo. Having discussed a number of Harjo’s poems in my Native American Literature class over the past few years, I’m thrilled to get the opportunity to hear her read in person. I have a book of her poetry–She Had Some Horses–that I hope to get her to sign.
The Joy Harjo event is the sixth annual installment in the Jack Higgs Reading Series and will take place in the Culp Auditorium on the ETSU campus. The event is free and open to the public. (If you’re a friend of mine in North Carolina instead of Tennessee, I believe that Harjo will read the following night–Thursday the 12th–on the campus of my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Asheville.)
I’ll be reading from Gabriel’s Songbook at 11:00 on Tuesday morning (the 10th). At readings so far, I’ve read mostly from the “Delbert Gunter” sections of the novel. This past weekend at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina, I tried out a reading taken from Chapter 7: The Songbird, which seemed to go well, so that’s probably what I’ll read on Tuesday.
I was happy to see one of my professors from Western Carolina University at City Lights. Dr. Jim Nicholl came for the reading and we were able to catch up some on the past twenty-plus years. (I completed my MA at WCU in August 1995.)
I enjoyed seeing Dr. Nicholl, but, of course, part of the catching up was learning the sad news that one of my favorite profs, Dr. Hal Farwell, walked on just within the last few months. I have a couple of favorite memories related to Dr. Farwell. One is seeing him with my son Raleigh at a graduate program party somewhere in Arden (south of Asheville), I think. Somehow Raleigh latched on to Dr. Farwell and drew him into some imaginative adventure in our host’s backyard. The only thing I remember about it was Farwell’s being “my leader” to Raleigh’s character. Another memory is from a few years later, when I was back at WCU, teaching in a visiting position and trying to get started on my dissertation. Farwell offered me his house one spring break when he was heading somewhere out of town, and it was there in the quiet of the Cullowhee area where I was able to get my dissertation up and running.