NEWS

Author Kenan to kick off new ‘Writing the South’ speaker series

CHAPEL HILL -- Author Randall Kenan will kick off the Writing the South Speaker Series Tuesday, April 1, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Center for the Study of the American South event begins at 7:30 p.m. in 116 Murphey Hall. The talk will be entitled "Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well?: Lies in Non-Fiction, Truth in Fiction." Refreshments and food will be served. Admission is free to the event, rescheduled due to winter weather.

Kenan is the 2002-2003 Lehman-Brady Distinguished Professor of Documentary Studies at Duke and UNC. Kenan’s first novel was "A Visitation of Spirits," published when he was 26 years old. "Let the Dead Bury the Dead," a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award," was published three years later.

The Carolina alumnus published a biography of James Baldwin in 1992. He later teamed up with photographer Norman Mauskopf on a pictorial, "A Time Not Here: The Mississippi Delta." Kenan received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and has contributed to The New York Times and The Nation. His non-fiction work, "Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century," was the product of a seven-year journey across the United States to search for and chronicle contemporary black experience.

Kenan is among a series of well-known Southern writers who will stop by Carolina this spring to discuss their recent work.

The speaker series is organized by Dr. William R. Ferris, Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of History and senior associate director of the UNC center, in conjunction with his spring 2003 folklore course, "Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition."

Others speakers and dates in the series are:

· Lee Smith and Hal Crowther, March 25, 7:30 pm, Gardner 08.

· Alan Gurganus, March 27, 7:30 pm, Gardner 08.

· Elizabeth Spencer, April 22, 7:30 pm, Gardner 08.

Since 1992, the Center for the Study of the American South has been investigating Southern traditions and identity and exploring how the South affects the evolution of culture and society around the globe.

For more information about the speaker series, call 962-5665. Additional information about the center is at www.unc.edu/depts/csas/.

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Contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593.