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The home where Wilma Dykeman (1920-2006) grew up has been donated to the University of North Carolina at Asheville to implement an expanded Writers-in-Residence Program. The eleven-acre property is located near the head of Beaverdam Valley just north of Asheville. Authors will live in the residence for varying periods of time – from a semester to a week-end. The program will include workshops, public lectures and course offerings. It will “support both the craft of writing and the interdisciplinary topics of enduring interest to Wilma Dykeman during her lifetime, including but not limited to the environment, social change, human relations,...

Brent Kennedy, III, died at the age of 69 on September 21, 2020, in Wise, Virginia. He was the Author of The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People and co-author of two other Melungeon books and a founder in 1997 of the Melungeon Heritage Association. He is often credited with helping to make Melungeon heritage a point of pride, rather than of racist derision. Kennedy served for years as Vice Chancellor for Development and College Relations at the University of Virginia-Wise. A life-long resident of Wise, he was the owner and operator of Kennedy Auto Sales and Service Station....

Jayne Ann Phillips has scored a starred review in the August 17th issue of Publishers Weekly for The Collected Breece D’J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters which she has edited. The review concludes, “With its impressive quantity of annotation and tribute, this omnibus offers Pancake fans a deeper look at the artist and will go a long way to inviting others to join this legion.” George Singleton scored a starred review in the July 17th issue of Publishers Weekly for his book, You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton due to be published in September. The review concludes, “Fans and...

Glenis Redmond has been selected for South Carolina’s highest award for achievement in the arts, the Verner Award, for 2020. She is the Poet-in-Residence at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina and founded the Greenville poetry slam and co-founded the Asheville, North Carolina youth poetry slam. She has lectured widely in the United States and abroad. Her most recent poetry book is What My Hand Say (2016), and she contributed to two anthologies last year, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia and Furious Flower.   Among the books included in Publishers Weekly’s FALL ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE: In HISTORY The...

The Charlotte Observer recommends ten books for our spring and summer reading. They include: Outbound Train by Renea Winchester of Whittier, North Carolina Bells for Eli by Susan Beckham Zurenda of Spartanburg, South Carolina   When These Mountains Burn by David Joy, due out on August 18th, is on the Southern Independent  Booksellers Alliance’s Okra Picks for Summer 2020.