The Visiting Writers Series

    Enrichment is an integral part of any well-rounded college experience. Here at Catawba Valley Community College, the Visiting Writers Series serves to provide our students with the opportunity to explore a text and meet the voice behind its creation.

    Begun in Fall 1999, the Visiting Writers Series was originally the product of joint efforts between CVCC and Lenoir-Rhyne College. By Fall 2001, CVCC was hosting its own independent series. The Visiting Writers Series provides a liberal arts support to the college's core curriculum. Each semester, a new writer and a requisite work are selected; the chosen work is then integrated into our Humanities curriculum, and individual course study of the text precedes the Visiting Writer's on-campus presentation.

    A variety of writers have visited our main campus in the past six years. And, from Robert Morgan to Dori Sanders, these guest writers have offered their unique perspectives and contributed greatly to the academic environment we at CVCC strive to provide for our students.

    For more information on CVCC's Visiting Writer's Series, please contact Tim Peeler, Director of the Learning Assistance Center and Chair of the Visiting Writer's Series Committee.

Fall 2005 Visiting Writer

    This semester, the CVCC Visiting Writer's Series, in conjunction with the Hickory Public Library, will host Tony Earley, author of Jim the Boy, the story of a boy growing up in a small North Carolina town during the Great Depression. Earley will present and read on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at Patrick S. Beaver Library and on Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 11 a.m. in the CVCC Multipurpose Complex.

   Born in 1961, Earley is a novelist and short story writer. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, but grew up in North Carolina, where his stories are often set. He studied English at Warren Wilson College, and after graduation in 1983, he spent four years as a areporter in North Carolina, first as a general assignment reporter for The Thermal Belt News Journal in Columbus, and then as a sports editor and feature writer at The Daily Courier in Forest City. Later he attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he received an MFA in creative writing. He quickly found success writing short stories, first with smaller literary magazines, then with Harper's, which published two of his stories -- "Charlotte" in 1992 and "The Prophet from Jupiter" in 1993. The latter story helped Harper's win a national magazine award for fiction in 1994.

    In 1996, Earley's short stories earned him a place on Granta's list of the "20 Best Young American Fiction Writers" and shortly after that announcement, The New Yorker featured him in an issue that focused on the best new fiction writers in America. He has twice been included in the anthology Best American Short Stories. His writing style has been compared by critics such as Hemingway and E.B. White. One of his favorite writers is Willa Cather.

    Earley lives with his wife and dogs in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He is currently at work on his second novel, a sequel to Jim the Boy.

Former Visiting Writers

● Fall 1999: Robert Morgan, The Truest Pleasure (novel)

● Spring 2000: Luis Rodriguez, Trochemoche (poetry)

● Fall 2000: Joe Connelly, Bringing Out the Dead (novel)

● Spring 2001: Ron Rash, Among the Believers (novel)

● Fall 2001: Robert Inman, Dairy Queen Days (novel)

● Spring 2002: Irene Huneycutt, Waiting for the Trout to Speak (poetry)

● Fall 2002: Dori Sanders, Clover (novel)

● Spring 2003: Keith Flynn, The Lost Sea (poetry)

● Fall 2003: Julia Nunnally Duncan, Blue Ridge Shadows (short stories)

● Spring 2004: Ron Rash, Raising the Dead (poetry)

● Fall 2004: Robert Inman, Captain Saturday (novel)

● Spring 2005: Robin Behn, Horizon Note (poetry)

Last Updated 09/28/05

L. Lyda, M.A.

English Instructor, Humanities