October 30 @ 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Hill Ballroom, Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill, NC
In his 1935 novel Of Time and the River, Thomas Wolfe wrote, “October had come again, and he would lie there in his mother’s house at night, and feel the darkness moving softly all about him, and hear the dry leaves scampering on the street outside, and the huge and burly rushes of the wind. And then the wind would rush away with huge caprice, and he could hear it far off roaring with remote demented cries in the embraces of great trees, and he would lie there thinking: October has come again—has come again.”
In honor of Wolfe’s birthday month, this literary symposium will feature a lecture by award-winning novelist and short story author Tony Earley followed by short readings from new works by Minrose Gwin, Randall Kenan, Mesha Maren, Julia Ridley Smith, and Monique Truong. These acclaimed authors will discuss the state of southern literature in the twenty-first century.
The symposium, co-sponsored by the Blythe Family Fund, the North Carolina Collection, the Southern Historical Collection, and Southern Cultures, will be held in the Hill Ballroom at the Carolina Inn from 2:00-4:30 pm. Admission is free and open to the public, but seating may be limited. Please RSVP here!
The lives and legacies of four writers who attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between the two world wars, will be the subject of an exhibit July 16 through Sept. 30 at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.
The free, public exhibit, Four from between the Wars: Paul Green, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Ruark, and Walker Percy, will be on view in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Room on the third floor of Wilson Library.
"Four from between the Wars" exhibit flier
Approximately 75 historic photographs, rare printed items, and original documents illustrate the development of these students into some of the South’s best-known writers of the 20th century. The exhibit will also explore their literary circles and work of their protégés.
Among the items to be displayed is a copy of Wolfe’s autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel that he inscribed for his mother in 1929, and first editions of Wolfe’s novels. More fanciful items include a Thomas Wolfe T-shirt and a commemorative postage stamp.
First editions of the works of Ruark, a journalist and novelist, are on exhibit, along with cartoons he drew for campus publications as a student.
Green, a dramatist, teacher, and humanitarian, is represented with letters from fellow writers and collaborators including Richard Wright, Betty Smith, and Orson Welles. The exhibit also includes images and artifacts relating to the production of Green’s outdoor drama The Lost Colony (1937), which is still performed each summer on Roanoke Island, near North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
“It was during the interwar period that UNC became a modern research university,” said Eileen McGrath, assistant curator of the North Carolina Collection and one of the exhibit organizers.
“These authors came to the University as young men, novice writers,” McGrath said. “Their experiences here enabled them to develop their understanding of themselves and the world.”
“The festival focuses on contemporary writers,” said Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist for the Southern Historical Collection. “We wanted to offer a space for people to come and reflect on the historical aspect of Southern writing.”
Details:
Four from between the Wars:
Paul Green, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Ruark, and Walker Percy
Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room, Wilson Library
July 16-Sept. 30, 2009
Free and open to the public
Exhibit information: rbcref@email.unc.edu, (919) 962-1143
In conjunction with the North Carolina Literary Festival, Sept. 10-13, 2009
