Author Scott and poet Owens at Catawba Feb. 10

Published 12:00 am Friday, January 30, 2009

Catawba College’s English Department is sponsoring a reading by author Joanna Catherine Scott and poet Scott Owens at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 10, in Tom Smith Auditorium, Ketner Hall. The reading is open to the public.
Scott’s most recent novel, “The Road from Chapel Hill,” was a SIBA/Book Sense Southern Literary Bestseller. Set partially in Salisbury, “The Road from Chapel Hill” provides a Civil War-time view of that town, as well as a vivid portrayal of what it was like to be a prisoner of war inside the infamous Salisbury Prison.
Scott is the author of three previous novels, all inspired by true stories. She has also published a non-fiction book, “Indochina’s Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam,” and four poetry collections. Her work has been honored with a Vietnam Veteran’s Association Book-of-the-Month selection, the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Brockman-Campbell Award, the Black Zinnias Poetry Book Award, the Longleaf Poetry Award, the Rita Dove Poetry Award, and the Randall Jarrell Poetry Award.
Scott was born in England, raised in Australia, took her graduate degree in philosophy at Duke University, and now lives in Chapel Hill. She is working on a new poetry collection, “An Innocent in the House of the Dead,” inspired by her friendship with an innocent young man on death row who has recently been granted a new trial on grounds of a corrupt jury.Owens, graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro MFA program, co-editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review, chairman of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize for the Poetry Council of N.C., and author of “Musings,” a weekly poetry column in Outlook, is the 2008 visiting writer at Catawba Valley Community College. His first full-length collection of poetry, “The Fractured World,” was published in August by Main Street Rag.
He is also author of three chapbooks “The Persistence of Faith” (1993) from Sandstone Press, “Deceptively Like a Sound” (Dead Mule, 2008), “The Book of Days” (Dead Mule, 2009) and more than 300 poems published in various journals. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Prize this year.
His poem, “On the Days I Am Not My Father,” was featured on Garrison Keillor’s NPR show “The Writer’s Almanac. Born in Greenwood, S.C.,” he now lives in Hickory, where he teaches and coordinates the Poetry Hickory reading series.