The fourth Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming will take place in Greenville September 28 and 29, 2007.  Building on the success of the 2006 Homecoming, this year’s event will feature  eight award-winning authors whose work focuses on North Carolina.  The general public is encouraged to attend this wonderful event celebrating eastern North Carolina’s authors and literary traditions.

    The celebration begins on Friday, September 28 at 7:30 pm with the 2007 Roberts Award for Literary Inspiration presentation and reception.  This year’s award winners are Alex Albright, Eva Roberts, and W. Keats Sparrow, who are being recognized for their work on the North Carolina Literary Review.  The evening’s event will also feature readings by authors Alice McGill and Philip Gerard.

    Saturday’s events begin at 9:15 am with a panel discussion on Creating Story Through History  the panel includes Lu Ann Jones, author of Mama Learned Us to Work - Farm Women in the New South and Re-visioning the Countryside: Southern Women, Rural Reform, and the Farm Economy in the New South, and Dorothy Spruill Redford, author of Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage   which chronicles her efforts at organizing a “homecoming” of more than two thousand descendents of slaves and slave owners of Somerset Plantation in Creswell, North Carolina .

    A panel entitled Creating Fiction from Family and History will begin at 11:15 featuring Alice McGill story teller and author of the book Hollow of Your Hand: Slave Lullabies, a children’s picture book that includes recordings of her singing and talking about the songs and award-winning author and playwright Kat Meads whose latest work is entitled The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan Benedict Roberts Duncan.

    A discussion entitled Telling the Story Through Poetry will begin at 2 p.m.  The panel will feature Jeffrey Franklin, the poetry editor for the North Carolina Literary Review whose work has appeared in such journals as The Hudson Review, New England Review, and Tar River Poetry as well as in Best American Poetry and Susan Meyers, a Greenville native whose book Keep and Give Away won the South Carolina Poetry Prize and the 2007 SIBA Book Award for Poetry.

    The event’s keynote address will be delivered at 4:00 pm by playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, and Burgaw, North Carolina native Samm-Art Williams. His Broadway play Home (about returning to a small North Carolina town from New York City) was nominated for a Tony Award and received an NAACP Image Award.  He has also been nominated for two Emmy Awards for his work on the small screen which includes shows for both PBS and Showtime and episodes of Cagney and Lacey, Miami Vice, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  He has also been the recipient of fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    All Homecoming events will take place in the Teaching Resources Center on the second floor of the Joyner Library, which is located on East Carolina University’s main campus.  On-site registration begins at 8:00 am and events will conclude at 5:00 pm.

    This years Homecoming is made possible through a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council and sponsored by East Carolina.  Though the event is free to the public, early registration is preferred.  Registration at the door will be accepted as space permits.  Saturday’s events include a boxed luncheon with the authors.  Reservations and payment are required to take part in the luncheon.  More information on this part of Saturday’s events plus expanded author biographies; directions; and registration forms, can be found on the Web at http://www.ecu.edu/lithomecoming, by calling (252) 328-1068 or via email at lithomecoming@ecu.edu.
 

Matthew Reynolds is a librarian in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection