Earl Hamner, author and creator of TV’s “The Waltons, will be featured author at Berea College event June 22

Earl Hamner

Hamner is the Spring issue’s featured author.  Watercolorist Elizabeth Ellison, the issue’s featured artist, will also be present and will display her art for sale.

Refreshments will be served beginning at 7:30 p.m. and the reading will start at 8 p.m.  The event, co-sponsored by the Berea College Appalachian Center and the Department of English, Theatre and Speech Communication, is free and all are invited to attend.

Hamner is the author of six novels.  “Spencer’s Mountain” and “The Homecoming” were both made into movies and became the basis for the long running television series “The Waltons.”  Hamner was born and grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountain village of Schuyler, and these well known works spring from his Great Depression-era boyhood there.  In addition to his books and tv series, Hamner has written extensively for films and television.

Hamner’s diverse television credits include “The Today Show, “ where he was a reporter.  He has written for shows that include “The Twilight Zone” and “CBS Playhouse,” and is the creator and producer of the long-running television drama “Falcon Crest.”  His other movie credits include “Where the Lilies Bloom,” “Palm Springs Weekend” and the animated feature based on E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web.”

For his writing, Hamner has been honored by the Television Academy with an Emmy.  He has also received the Peabody Award for Distinguished Journalism, The Man of the Year Award from the State of Virginia, and has received honorary degrees from several institutions of higher education, including Berea College.  His life and works are the subject of a biography written by Jim Person and published in 2005 titled “Earl Hamner:  From Walton’s Mountain to Tomorrow.”

Artist Elizabeth Ellison is also a papermaker, andis the owner and operator of “Elizabeth Ellison Watercolors,” her studio and gallery in Bryson City, N.C.  A native of Milton, N.C., Ellison is of Occaneechi Indian descent.  She has exhibited and sold widely throughout the United States for more than 30 years and also gives lessons and workshops in her studio and other locations in Appalachia.  Her pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors have appeared in “Blue Ridge Outdoors,” “Outdoor Traveler,” “Fodor’s Guide to the National Parks and Seashores of the East” and other publications.

For more about “Appalachian Heritage” magazine, the Weatherford Award for Appalachian literature and the Berea College Appalachian Center, visit www.berea.edu/appalachiancenter/