Miscellany

The North Carolina Literary Review celebrated its 10th anniversary on Sunday, October 6, at the home of the current editor, Margaret Bauer.

The Writers Reading Series of Eastern North Carolina, under the direction of Resa Crane Bizzaro, Ellen Arnold, and Pat Bizzaro, brought two notable writers to Greenville.  Tim Gautreaux gave readings on Sept. 24 at 3 p.m. in Mendenhall Student Center and at 7 p.m. at the Greenville Museum of Art.  Gautreaux's work includes Same Place, Same Things(1997), The Next Step in the Dance (1999), and Welding With Children (2000). His work has appeared in Harper's, GQ, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories From the South.  Born and reared in Morgan City, Louisiana, Gautreaux often writes of the paradoxes of contemporary Cajun life.  Bland Simpson appeared on Oct. 21, reading from his non-fiction works: Into the Sound Country: a Carolinian's Coastal Plain (1997) and Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering (2002).  His work also includes: The Great Dismal: a Carolinian Swamp Memoir (1990), The Mystery of the Beautiful Nell Cropsey: a Nonfiction Novel (1993), and Heart of the Country: a Novel of Southern Music (1996).  Among the several songs composed from his association with The Red Clay Ramblers, Simpson performed "The Sound-side of Life," a song about safe harbor on the sound side of the Carolina coast -- "It's hoi toid on the sewnd soid tonoight."  Simpson was born in Elizabeth City and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Since 1984, Dalkey Archive Press has been a leading nonprofit publisher of notable literature of the past 100 years. Without their efforts, many books would go out of print and stay that way. Marinella Macree profiles the Press and its origins.

The Department of English, with the help of Jim Holte, hosted cultural critic David Skal who presented his world famous lecture, "Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween," on Monday Oct. 21.  Skal traced the route of witches in America from the Salem witch trials of 1692 to contemporary Salem, Mass., "which has evolved into a kind of theme park with shops selling brooms and potions and Christian fundamentalists pamphleteering in the streets."  Skal also provided a forecast of possible developments.  His most recent book also bears the same title, Death Makes a Holiday, published by Bloomsbury Press (2002).  His other work includes: Hollywood Gothic: the Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (1990), The Monster Show: a Cultural History of Horror (1994), Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Mad Culture (1998), and Vampire: Encounters with the Undead (2001).