Summer Reading Program Author
GREG MORTENSON
(Three Cups of Tea)
Thursday, September 10
FARTHING AUDITORIUM
7:30 p.m.

Greg Mortenson was born in Minnesota and grew up on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, where his father co-founded the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, a teaching hospital.  He served in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1977-79, where he received the Army Commendation Medal. He graduated from the University of South Dakota and pursued graduate studies in neurophysiology.  In 1993, Mortenson climbed Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range. After K2, while recovering in a local village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.  From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  As of 2008, Mortenson had established over 78 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 28,000 children, including 18,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before. Mortenson co-wrote Three Cups of Tea with David Oliver Relin, and the book has been a # 1 New York Times bestseller for 82 weeks since its January 2007 release, and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.  Mortenson has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by six members of the U.S. Congress.  In March 2008, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education and literacy in rural areas. Mortenson is the co-founder of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute and Pennies For Peace. He currently lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife and two children.  (Thursday, September 10)


Novelist
DOROTHY ALLISON
(Bastard Out of Carolina; Cavedweller; Trash)
Thursday, September 24
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m

Craft Talk: "You Are Where You Dream"
Table Rock Room
3:30-4:45 p.m.

Dorothy Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina. She became a recognized poet and short story writer in the 1980s with her collections The Women Who Hate Me and Trash. But it was not until the publication of her first novel, Bastard out of Carolina, that Allison garnered mainstream attention as a writer. Bastard Out of Carolina was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award and went on to win both the Ferro Grumley and Bay Area Book Reviewers Awards for fiction. A movie version of the novel, directed by Angelica Huston, premiered in 1996.  Allison has secured her reputation as a writer who deals frankly and boldly with issues of gender, class, and sexual orientation in these, as well as in more recent works, which include the nonfiction accounts Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature, a collection of Allison's essays, speeches and performance pieces which won the 1995 American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award; the autobiographical Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, which was selected as a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review and was translated into a short documentary; and her 1998 novel, Cavedweller, which went on to become a New York Times Notable Book of the year, a finalist for the Lillian Smith prize, and an ALA prize winner.  Allison is a member of the board of PEN International. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Coalition Against Censorship and Feminists for Free Expression, and the advisory board of the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Award, a prize which is presented annually to a science fiction or fantasy work that explores and expands on contemporary ideas of gender. Allison is proclaimed "one of the finest writers of her generation" by the Boston Globe and "simply stunning" by the New York Times Book Review.  She makes her home in Northern California. She lives with her partner, Alix Layman, and her son, Wolf Michael.
         Her craft talk, “You Are Where You Dream,” will consider what constitutes a sense of place in story.  (Thursday, September 24)


Rachel Rivers-Coffey
Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing
Poet
PAUL ZIMMER
(Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems; Family Reunion; Trains in the Distance)
Thursday, October 8
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Craft Talk: "Poetry and the Heart"
Price Lake Room
2-3:15 p.m.

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

Paul Zimmer (2009 Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing) has published twelve books of poetry, including Family Reunion (University of Pittsburgh Press), which won an Award for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; The Great Bird of Love (University of Illinois Press), which was selected by William Stafford for the National Poetry Series; Big Blue Train (University of Arkansas Press); and Crossing to Sunlight: Selected Poems (University of Georgia Press). Two books of his memoirs and essays, After the Fire: A Writer Finds His Place (University of Minnesota Press) and Trains in the Distance (Kent State University Press) have also been published. His writing has been awarded five Pushcart Prizes, three for poetry, and two for essays. His pieces have been named as Notable Essays five times in the annual Best Essays of the Year Series, and he won Shenandoah’s Thomas H. Carter Prize for the Essay in 2005.  His new book of poetry, Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems, appeared from the University of Georgia Press in the spring of 2007. (Thursday, October 8)

Honoring the late newspaperwoman and writer Rachel Rivers-Coffey, the Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professorship in Creative Writing annually sponsors the residency of a writer of national prominence at Appalachian State University. This position rotates among various distinguished authors of all creative genres; distinguished professors teach a creative writing seminar, conduct community outreach and other off-campus activities, and are featured annually in the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series.


Poet
PAULA MEEHAN
(Dharmakaya; Mysteries of the Home: A Selection of Poems; Pillow Talk)
Wednesday, November 4
Please Note Day and Location: Room 114, Belk Library
7:30 p.m.

Craft Talk: "Private Sources, Public Speech--Making it Up from Scratch"
Room 114, Belk Library   TBA
3:30-4:45 p.m.

Paula Meehan was born in 1955 and raised in two famous working-class districts of Dublin, before graduating from Trinity College and Eastern Washington University. She has written plays for children and adults and has conducted writing workshops with inner city communities and in prisons as well as universities. Her work is much translated and widely anthologized. Among the prizes she has won are The Martin Toonder Award (1995), the Butler Literary Award (1998) and the Denis Devlin Award (2002). More recently she has turned to writing plays. She is a member of Aosdána, and lives in Dublin. Her books of poetry include Return and No Blame (Beaver Row Press, 1984), Reading the Sky (Beaver Row,1985), The Man Who was Marked by Winter (Gallery Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Irish Literature Prize for Poetry), and Pillow Talk (Gallery Press, 1994), which was also shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry. Mysteries of the Home: A Selection of Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 1996, and in 2000, Carcanet Press and Wake Forest University Press published Dharmakaya. In 2003, Carcanet included a generous portion of her work in Three Irish Poets: Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan, Mary O’Malley. Wake Forest will publish her newest volume, Painting Rain, in early 2009. Her plays include Mrs. Sweeney (New Island Books, 1999) and Cell: a play (New Island Books, 2000). (Wednesday, November 4)


Poet
FRANK X. WALKER
(When Winter Come: The Ascension of York; Black Box; Affrilachia)
Thursday, November 19
Table Rock Room
Plemmons Student Union
7:30 p.m.

Frank X. Walker is a native of Danville, Kentucky, a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and completed an MFA in Writing at Spalding University in May 2003.  A multidisciplinary artist, Walker is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets.  He is the editor of America! What's My Name? The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag and Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium and the author of four poetry collections: When Winter Come: the Ascension of York; Black Box; Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York, winner of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award; and Affrilachia, a Kentucky Public Librarians' Choice Award nominee. A Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship recipient, Walker's poems have been converted into a stage production by the University of Kentucky Theatre Department and widely anthologized in numerous collections. Other new work appeared recently in Mischief, Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies, Tobacco, Kentucky Christmas, Cornbread Nation III, Kudzu, The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass and the Louisville Review.  Walker has served as Founder/Executive Director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, the Program Coordinator of the University of Kentucky's King Cultural Center, and the Assistant Director of Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. The University of Kentucky awarded Walker an honorary Doctorate of Humanities in 2001 for his collective community work and artistic achievements. He is the recipient of the 2006 Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence and the Actors Theatre's Keeper of the Chronicle Award, and was a 2005 Recipient of a $75,000 Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry.
         Walker regularly teaches in writing programs such as Fishtrap in Oregon and SplitRock at the University of Minnesota; currently serves as the Writer in Residence and lecturer of English at Northern Kentucky University; and is the proud editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the new Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture.
         During his visit to Appalachian State, Frank Walker will give an afternoon reading to middle-school students at the Western Youth Network.  (Thursday, November 19)

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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.