17th Annual Spring Literary Festival starts this week

Western Carolina’s 17 Annual Spring Literary Festival starts Thursday, March 21 and features a variety of voices of literary writers from the Appalachian region and beyond. What began as a visiting writer’s series has grown over the years into a week-long festival of fiction writers, nonfiction writers, essayists, and poets sharing their work with the […]

American journalist and nonfiction writer Rick Bragg

American journalist and nonfiction writer Rick Bragg will be speaking at the Spring Literary Festival on April 7 at 4 p.m. in the UC Theater. He will be reading from a few of his memoirs and speaking about his time as a journalist. Bragg was born in the small city of Piedmont, Alabama, and grew […]

Appalachian poet, teacher, and fiber artist Jane Hicks

Joining Darnell Arnoult at 4 p.m. in the UC Theater for the Spring Literary Festival will be Appalachian poet, teacher, and fiber artist Jane Hicks and she will be reading from her new book of poems titled Driving with the Dead. A native of upper East Tennessee, Hicks is an award-winning poet and quilter. Her […]

Well-known fiction writer Lee Smith

Fiction writer Lee Smith will be speaking at the Spring Literary Festival on April 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Coulter Recital Hall and she is expected to draw a very large crowd. Smith will be reading from her recently published novel Dimestore, a memoir about Smith herself and about a time and place that most […]

Local poet and novelist Darnell Arnoult

Poet and novelist Darnell Arnoult will be joining us at the Spring Literary Festival on April 6, at 4 p.m. in the UC Theater and she will be reading from her collection of poems titled What Travels With Us and her fiction novel Sufficient Grace. Arnoult was born and raised in Henry County, Virginia, but […]

Puerto Rican-American writer Judith Ortiz Cofer

Latina poet, fiction and nonfiction writer Judith Ortiz Cofer, will be speaking on Tuesday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the UC Theater as part of the WCU Spring Literary Festival. She will be touching on her stories about coming-of-age experiences in Puerto Rican communities outside of New York City and her poems and essays […]