Town of Canton issued the following announcement on Apr. 14.
Thursday, April 28 | 6:30pm
UNCA Interdisciplinary Professorship of the Mountain South
Mannheimer Room, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, UNC Asheville campus.
300 Campus View Rd, Asheville, NC
Friday, April 29 | 3:00pm
St Andrew’s Episcopal Church
99 Academy St, Canton, NC
If interested in attending one of these FREE showings please email cponton@cantonnc.com
Fred Chappell is the author of more than 30 works of fiction, criticism and poetry, and the winner of numerous awards. Some claim that “Fred Chappell is the most important Southern writer ever.” (author Lee Smith) while others say he is “one of the most important poets of our time.” (author Robert Morgan). But no one is really surprised if you have never heard of him.
Chappell grew up on a farm in the Great Smokey Mountains. His early life was marked by the struggle between the old ways of Appalachia that lingered due to the region’s isolation, and the new ways of modern industry represented by the Champion Paper and Fiber Company. Chappell read pulp magazines as a kid and wrote science fiction as a teenager. He went on to help create one of the nation’s first graduate creative writing programs, and later in his life won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, an award that puts him in the company of Robert Frost, W.H. Auden and e.e.cummings. Fred was among the first Appalachian writers to challenge the hillbilly stereotype and he remains a galvanizing spiritual leader for the region’s writers. But Fred’s work is better known among scholars and poets than the general public. As Fred says, “It may be that I write for an audience of one, and have achieved that according to my publishers.”
Original source can be found here.
