Reading with author Jayne Anne Phillips March 13 at Berea College

Co-sponsored by the Berea College Appalachian Center, the Learning Center, and the Department of English, Theatre, and Speech Communication, the event will begin with refreshments at 7:30 p.m. in the Appalachian Center Gallery, followed by readings and conversation at 8:00 p.m.  Admission is free, and all are welcome.  The Gallery is located in the Bruce Building on the Berea College campus, near the intersection of Main and Chestnut Streets.

Phillips will be reading from Lark and Termite, and is appearing on campus as part of her new book tour. A Lexington Herald-Leader review, reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, calls Phillips’s new book “luminous, haunting and singular,” and assesses that “the novel’s raw immediacy is really quite spectacular.” Set during the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea, this triumphant new novel is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and the unseen, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us.

Photographer Tom Martin of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, the featured artist for the Winter 2009 issue, will also be present. Copies of his three books Kentucky Ice: A Winter Adventure, Rappelling, and Observations will be available for purchase.

Jayne Anne Phillips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia, attending West Virginia University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. A New York Times best-selling author, Phillips received a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first novel, Machine Dreams, which was also chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of twelve best books of the year. Shelter, her 1994 novel, was awarded an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was chosen one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly.

Phillips has also taught at Harvard University, Williams College, and Boston University, and is currently Professor of English and Director of a new MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Bunting Fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Her work has appeared most recently in Harper’s, Granta, Doubletake, and the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, and her novels and story collections have been published and translated in twelve foreign languages. Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer pronounced her to be “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty.”

APPALACHIAN HERITAGE strives to keep readers abreast of the visual and literary arts of the Southern Appalachian region by presenting a mix of well-established writers and artists as well as fresh new voices.  Founded in 1973, Appalachian Heritage is a part of the Berea College Appalachian Center and has been published since 1985 by Berea College.  Winter 2009 issues, as well as back issues, will be available for sale at the March 13 celebration.  For more information, visit www.berea.edu/appalachianheritage or call (859) 985-3699.

Appalachian Heritage Magazine 859-986-3699