Summer Reading Program Author
JEANNETTE WALLS
(The Glass Castle)
Thursday, September 4
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Journalist and Author of The Glass Castle

Critics have called Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, “spectacular,” “extraordinary,” “incredible,” and “riveting.” It has been a New York Times best-seller for more than 75 weeks, has sold more than 1.5 million copies, been translated into sixteen languages, and is being made into a movie by Paramount. Its numerous awards include the Christopher Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Books for Better Living Award. As the 2008 selection of Appalachian State University’s Summer Reading Program and the community-based Watauga Reads, the book has been read by and discussed by the entering freshman class and by numerous community members at the Watauga County Public Library. 

In The Glass Castle, Walls describes growing up in the desert of the American Southwest and then in a West Virginia mining town with her three siblings and the brilliant, unorthodox, irresponsible parents who manage at once to neglect them, love them, and teach them to face their fears. The story is at times harrowing and at times hilarious as the children go without food and indoor plumbing yet are encouraged to read Shakespeare and dream of the beautiful glass house they will all one day build. Despite all her hardships, Walls develops the determination to leave West Virginia on her own at the age of sixteen, move to New York City, enroll in Barnard College and eventually become a well-known columnist for New York magazine and MSNBC.com and a television personality.

This inspirational book has been taught at universities in courses on literature, psychology, parenting, child development, and poverty. Walls has spoken at colleges, corporations, and business associations about overcoming hardship and the keys to turning adversity to your advantage. Rosie O’Donnell called The Glass Castle “a beautiful, brave, transformative book….The best book I’ve read in years.” And the Atlanta Constitution said, “Charles Dickens has nothing on Jeannette Walls…Dickens’s scenes of poverty and hardship are no more audacious and no more provocative than those in the pages of this stunning memoir.”

Walls lives in the Virginia Piedmont with her husband, the writer John Taylor. She has appeared on Prime Time Live, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Oprah, and the Diane Rehm Show.


CATHERINE BUSH and JOHN HARDY
(The Quiltmaker, Comin’ Up a Storm, Rattlesnake)
Thursday, September 25
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Craft Talk:
Playwriting:The Structure of Action
Table Rock Room
11-12:15

Playwrights

As an actor, over the course of a thirty year career in professional theatre, John has had the opportunity to play many of the great roles ever written including Hamlet, MacBeth, Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream and many others.  As a director he has directed over ninety professional productions in all styles and genres.  As a playwright he has had over forty professional productions of fifteen plays produced across the country and overseas.   He has performed his original one-man play, Rattlesnake, to great success over the last few years.  John recently received the Sara Spencer Award from the Southeastern Theatre Conference.  John holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and a PhD from Texas Tech University. 

Catherine Bush is the author of the plays The Other Side of the Mountain (Nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), I’ll Never Be Hungry Again, The Quiltmaker, Cry Wolf!, Tradin’ Paint and Wooden Snowflakes, all of which premiered at Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA.  Another play, Comin’ Up A Storm, will premier at Barter later this year.  She has recently been named a Steinberg Finalist (American Theatre Critics Association) for her play Just A Kiss which was produced last November by the New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL).  A three time winner of Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights, Bush currently works at Barter as a playwright-in-residence creating new works and as a dramaturge fine-tuning existing works.


Rachel Rivers-Coffey
Distinguished Professor of
Creative Writing
NANCY HUDDLESTON PACKER
(In My Father’s House; The Women Who Walk; Jealous-Hearted Me)
Thursday, October 9
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Pre-Reading Reception
Multicultural Center
Plemmons Student Union
6-7:15 p.m.

Fiction Writer

Nancy Huddleston Packer taught for over thirty years in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. Her publications include Small Moments (which received the California Commonwealth Club Silver Medal), In My Father’s House, The Women Who Walk, Jealous-Hearted Me (which received the Alabama Library Association Award), and several textbooks on writing.  Her stories have been widely anthologized, including in O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Stories.  Packer grew up in Birmingham , Alabama.  She attended Birmingham-Southern College and the University of Chicago. Her two children, Ann Packer and George Packer, are both nationally known writers, and the family was featured in a recent San Francisco Chronicle Magazine cover article titled “Literary Lineage: Palo Alto’s Packers, A Dynasty of Writers.”  She will serve as the 2008 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing.


MATTHEW VOLLMER
(Future Missionaries of America)
Thursday, October 23
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Craft Workshop:
The Story Machine
Table Rock Room
3:30-4:45 p.m.

Fiction Writer

Matthew Vollmer’s stories have been published in the Paris Review, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, and elsewhere. His first book of stories, Future Missionaries of America, will be published in January 2009 by MacAdam/Cage and in the United Kingdom by Salt Publishing. A native of western North Carolina and an alumnus of both the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, he recently graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently teaching at Virginia Tech University, in Blacksburg, Virginia.


SHIRLETTE AMMONS
(Matching Skin)
Thursday, December 4
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Craft Talk:
Poetry and Music
Table Rock Room
3:30-4:45

Poet and Musician

Shirlette Ammons’ new book of poetry, Matching Skin, with an accompanying CD, was published in Fall 2008 by Carolina Wren Press of Durham, North Carolina. Her first collection of poetry, Stumphole Aunthology of Bakwoods Blood was pub¬lished by Big Drum Press in 2002. Her work recent¬ly appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South; What Your Momma Never Told You: True Stories about Love and Sex; and The Asheville Review. Her poetry and writings have also appeared in a number of magazines and alternative publications, including Fierce, Venus, and The Independent Weekly. She has received a John Hope Franklin Grant for Documentary Studies, the Ebony¬Harlem Award for Literary Talent, and Emerging Artist Grants from both the Durham Arts Council and the United Arts Council. She is also vocalist and co¬bassist for the hip¬hop rock band Mosadi Music whose debut album, The Window, was released in 2006. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her partner and their dog, Zaji.

Parking is free on campus after 5 p.m. We recommend the Library Parking Deck on College Street (from King Street, turn down College Street at the First Baptist Church). To reach the Student Union, cross College Street and follow the walkway between the chiller plant and the University Bookstore, passing the Post Office and entering the Student Union on the second floor. For further parking information or a map, please see www.parking.appstate.edu or call the Parking and Traffic Office (828) 262-2878.