Anne Shelby to be Featured at Literary Festival
The 29th annual Literary Festival will feature award-winning writer Anne Shelby for this year’s event that will take place from Oct. 28 - 29 in the Board of Visitors Lounge at the Van Dyke Center on the campus of Emory & Henry College.
Born and raised in southeastern Kentucky, Anne Shelby has published in a variety of genres, including six illustrated books for children; a collection of poems titled Appalachian Studies (2006); a volume of essays, Can a Democrat Get into Heaven? Politics, Religion and Other Things You Ain't Supposed to Talk About (2006); and a book of folktales for younger readers titled The Adventures of Molly Whuppie (2007).
Shelby is also a widely produced playwright, a singer and an oral storyteller, having written and performed The Lone Pilgrim: Songs and Stories of Aunt Molly Jackson. Her play Passing through the Garden: The Work of Belinda Mason was a finalist at the Barter Theatre's Festival of Appalachian Playwrights. She has won the Appalachian Writers Association's Poetry Competition and West Virginia Public Radio's Appalachian History Playwriting Competition.
The Literary Festival will begin with events starting at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 28 with two papers about Shelby’s work and a reading by the author. The final day of the festival will get under way starting at 2:30 p.m. with a final paper about Shelby's work. The festival will conclude at 3:30 p.m. with a public interview of Anne Shelby conducted by Marianne Worthington, from the University of the Cumberlands.
The Emory & Henry Literary Festival began in 1982 with a program devoted to Sherwood Anderson, who spent the final 15 years of his life in nearby Smyth County, Virginia. Since that inaugural occasion the festival has honored a living writer with strong ties to the Appalachian region.
The proceedings of each festival, along with some new writing by the featured author, are published in an annual issue of the College's Iron Mountain Review.
The Literary Festival is free and open to the public. If you have any questions about the 29th annual Literary Festival you can contact John Lang in the English Department at 276.944.6143 or by email at jlang@ehc.edu.
