Manning Featured Author for E&H Literary Festival

Poet Maurice Manning will be the featured author at the annual Emory & Henry College Literary Festival Thursday and Friday, Oct. 25-26.

Born in Danville, Ky., Manning has published four collections of poems. His first, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visision (2001), won the Yale Younger Poets Award and was selected for that award by W.S. Merwin. His second, A Companion for Owls (2004), focuses on legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone, who is the speaker of the poems.

The festival, which will be held in the E&H Board of Visitors Lounge of the Van Dyke Center, begins at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 25 with a discussion of Manning’s work led by Lisa Russ Spaar of the University of Virginia. A second discussion will follow at 3:30 p.m. At 7:30 p.m., Manning will read from his work.

On the following day, Barbara Smith of Alderson-Broaddus College will lead a discussion of Manning’s work. At 3:30, Manning will be interviewed by Nathaniel Perry of Hampden-Sydney College.

In 2007, Manning published Bucolics, a series of prayer-poems that Andrew Hudgins has called “a rich, lyrical meditation on the reciprocal relations between the divine and the human, creator and created. Manning’s recent book, The Common Man (2010) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and helped earn the poet a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Emory & Henry Literary Festival is free of charge and open to the public.

Thursday, Oct. 25:

2:30–“‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’, Chet’: What to Expect from Maurice Manning,” Barbara Smith, Alderson-Broaddus College

3:30–“Return of the Native Speaker: Maurice Manning’s Appalachian Dramatic Monologues,” Jesse Graves, East Tennessee State University

7:30–Maurice Manning reads from his work

Friday, Oct. 26:

2:30–“The Ecstatic Vernacular Vision of Maurice Manning,” Lisa Russ Spaar, University of Virginia at Charlottesville

3:30–Public Interview with Maurice Manning, conducted by Nathaniel Perry, Hampden-Sydney College