Carolina Mountains Literary Festival

[Britt Kaufmann]

More Events than Ever

at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival

 

Burnsville, NC,  July  29, 2011 –  All the excitement about the literary festival has spilled out into more events than ever before.  For the first time, the festival will show a film the night before the festival to lead into the many author events on the following Friday and Saturday—September 8-10.

 

The 82 minute documentary The Day Carl Sandburg Died was produced in 2011 by Asheville film company Bonesteel Films.   The film has been called “a masterfully constructed and inspirational visual essay on the legendary poet, writer and folk singer” by Yes! Weekly.  This special screening will take place in the Community room of the new Yancey County Public Library at 7pm on Thursday, September 8.

 

Also new is the addition of a Friday evening talk given by New York Times bestselling author Audrey Niffenegger.  Though she is known for her novels The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffeneger is also a visual artist who has taught paper arts at Penland School of Crafts.  At the festival, she will speak about how her visual and literary arts work together on Friday evening at 7pm in the Town Center.

 

Ron Rash will also release his first poetry collection in more than a decade at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival.  Waking will be published in September of 2011 by Hub City Press.  He will give a poetry reading on Saturday morning and will also be the keynote speaker for the Saturday evening banquet.

 

Two writing workshops will also be featured:  one on prose poetry given by 2010 favorite Holly Iglesias and the other by Brenda Lunsford Lilly on playwriting.  Lilly is the playwright whose play The Ballad of Tom Dooley showed at the Parkway Playhouse last season and brings to that same stage Along About Sundown later this season.  For more description about the workshops visit the website cmlitfest.org.

 

 The 2011 festival includes many published writers who hail from Mitchell and Yancey Counties:  Alan Gratz, Charles F. Price, Elaine McAlister Dellinger, Zack Allen, Britt Kaufmann, Brian Lee Knopp, Abigail DeWitt and Donna Jean Dreyer.  Familiar authors such as Rob Amburg, Joseph Bathanti,  and Jim Clark will also return.

 

As in years past, there are sessions especially for children on Saturday.  The ARTS MATTERS group will supervise hands-on projects and Poetry Alive!, the dynamic troupe from Asheville, will head up the day’s events held in the new Yancey County Library.  So, parents are encouraged to bring their children to these free events which enhance their students’ literacy and familiarize them with the new library. 

 

Even though the word “literary” is in the title, the festival is not academic in nature.  It is very much geared to the average reader or book lover, and curious people. Each year the festival strives to bring together authors, readers of all ages, novice writers, listeners and learners in small, intimate settings.  The goal is that the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival will inspire people to read more, write more, and contribute positively to society through the literary arts.