JOHNSON CITY – Filled with engaging presentations and audience question-and-answer sessions, East Tennessee State University’s annual Spring Literary Festival is this month.
“This year’s Spring Literary Festival at ETSU promises to be one of our most memorable ever with our keynote Jack Higgs Memorial Reader Daniel Wallace offering us the world premiere of his new memoir, ‘This Isn’t Going to End Well.' The book’s release date is one day before his visit, so attendees can get a hot-off-the-presses copy at the festival and have it autographed,” said Dr. Jesse Graves, ETSU’s poet-in-residence.
The festival runs Wednesday-Thursday, April 12-13. All events, free and open to the public, happen in the Reece Museum on ETSU’s main campus.
“Visitors can also see Dr. Scott Honeycutt’s exhibit, ‘Mr. December,’ on the artist William Nealy, who is the subject of Wallace's new book,” said Graves. “Many readers will remember that Wallace’s novel ‘Big Fish,’ which was made into a feature film by director Tim Burton, was the featured selection in the Johnson City Public Library ‘One Story, One Community’ program last summer.”
A complete schedule of events is here. Through the years, the annual event has drawn award-winning writers to campus to
engage both students and the community.
This year’s festivities include:
- Wallace, the author of six well-received novels and the J. Ross MacDonald distinguished professor of English at the University of North Carolina, where he also directs the Creative Writing Program;
- Adrienne Su, the author of five books of poems who teaches at Dickinson College;
- Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an award-winning author and editor of the Appalachian Futures Series; and
- Austin Bunn, a respected writer with bylines in a range of publications, including
The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine.
“We are thinking about foodways and culture this year, with the poet Adrienne Su,
whose new collection of poems, 'Peach State,' reflects on her Chinese-American upbringing
through the lens of food and family. Novelist Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a citizen
of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and author of the award-winning debut novel ‘Even
As We Breathe,’ will give our fiction writing presentation,” Graves added. “Screenwriter
and short story author Austin Bunn, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film 'Kill
Your Darlings,' will join us from Cornell University for the festival’s first-ever
screenwriting session.”
For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at (423) 439-8346.