CHAPEL HILL ó Authors expected to appear at the North Carolina Literary Festival, Sept. 10-13 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, include Rick Bragg, John Grisham, John Hart, Boone biographer Robert Morgan, Tobias Wolff and Doris Betts.Events will range over four days, with multiple authors speaking simultaneously at different venues. For a complete schedule and more on the authors, visit http://www.ncliteraryfestival.org/
Betts author of six novels and three short-story collections, set mostly in North Carolina, depicts ordinary people showing extraordinary perseverance and tenacious common sense in the face of life’s troubles.
Will Blythe is best known for his memoir, “To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.”Cadillac Man, real name Thomas Wagner, had been homeless and began talking one day with a man who turned out to be magazine writer and author Will Blythe. The result was “Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets.”
Fred Chappell, a former Poet Laureate of North Carolina, has written 12 poetry books, two story collections and eight novels.
Mike Craver was a member of the Red Clay Ramblers for 12 years. His off-Broadway credits include “The Oil City Symphony” (co-author and original cast member, Drama Desk Award), “Smoke on the Mountain,” and “Lunch at the Piccadilly” (co-writer and original cast), based on the book by Clyde Edgerton. Craver will appear with Edgerton for a musical performance based on Edgarton’s “The Bible Salesman.”
Edgerton is the author of eight novels, including “Walking Across Egypt” and “The Floatplane Notebooks.”
Paul Cuadros wrote “A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America,” which explores class and ethnic conflict through the story of a Latino high school soccer team in Siler City.
Elizabeth Edwards’ “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities” was a No. 1 New York Times best-seller.
Ronald Cotton was mistakenly identified as a rapist in 1984. The victim, Jennifer Thompson, had been raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment. But Cotton was innocent.
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Cotton tell this true story in “Picking Cotton” which describes an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the innocent man she sent to prison.
Erica Eisdorfer, editor of a coffee-table photo book published by UNC Press, “Carolina: Photographs from the First State University.”
William R. Ferris, co-edited the “Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Author Marianne Gingher, editor of “Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina’s Finest Writers”; Kelly Alexander of Chapel Hill; Dorothy Allison, author of National Book Award finalist “Bastard Out of Carolina”; poet James Applewhite; Dan Ariely, author of “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions”; romance and young adult writer Jenna Black; Michele Andrea Bowen, author of black Christian fiction.
Nic Brown, author of “Floodmarkers,” nominated for the Pushcart Prize; poet Michael Chitwood; screenwriter Dana Coen; novelists William Conescu, Pamela Duncan, Pam Durban; young adult author Sarah Dessen; poet Jesse Graves, journalist and novelist Masha Hamilton; romance novelist Sabrina Jeffries; retaurateur Bret Jennings; first-time novelist Todd Johnson; Paul Jones of ibiblio.org; Mocksville’s Courtney Jones Mitchell; romance writer Virginia Kantra; sci-fi/fantasy writer John (Joseph Vincent) Kessel; novelist Cassandra King, wife of Pat Conroy; Mur Lafferty, host of the podcast “I Should Be Writing”; poet Dorianne Laux; writer Robert Leleux; Zelda Lockhart, novelist and poet; Michael Malone, former head writer of the soap opera “One Life to Live”; Stephen March, a novelist, short story writer and songwriter;
Kevin McCarthy, director and screenwriter; Lydia Millet, author of six novels; Katherine Min’s novel, “Second Hand World,” a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Bingham Award; Shelia Moses wrote Dick Gregory’s memoir; novelists Jenny Offill and Janis Owens; poet Barbara Presnell of Lexington; poet and novelist Ann Propsero; Brian Ray, winner of the South Carolina First Novel Contest; essayist, critic and poet Warren Rochelle; editor David Rowell and brother, John Rowell, a short story writer; essayist Bernie Schein; Egypt-born novelist Samia Serageldin; poet Maureen Sherbondy; novelist Joanna Smith Rakoff; writer Elizabeth Spencer and the woman who writes about her, Sharon Swanson; video blogger Wayne Sutton; short fiction writer Wells Tower; short story writer Matthew Vollmer;Ron Rash, the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and best-selling novel “Serena”; forensic anthropologist and bestselling author Kathy Reichs; author of the Miss Julia series Ann B. Ross; Jaki Shelton Green, the first N.C. Piedmont Poet Laureate; Kathryn Stripling Byer, the state’s Poet Laureate for four years; Bill Smith, a chef in Chapel Hill for more than 25 years, and author of “Seasoned in the South”; and Elizabeth Strout, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Olive Kitteridge.”