Emory & Henry College's 30th annual Literary Festival will feature internationally recognized award-winning author Barbara Kingsolver. Raised in rural Kentucky, Kingsolver has published more than a dozen books, including her recent novel The Lacuna (2009), which won Great Britain's prestigious Orange Prize, given annually for the best novel in English written by a woman. Kingsolver has published five additional novels: The Bean Trees (1988), Animal Dreams (1990), Pigs in Heaven (1993), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), and Prodigal Summer (2000). She is also the author of a short story collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989) and a book of poems, Another America (1992); two books of essays, High Tide in Tucson (1995) and Small Wonder (2002); and three other books of nonfiction, among them Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007). The Poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won South Africa's National Book Award. In 2000 President Clinton presented Ms. Kingsolver with a National Humanities Medal, this country's highest award for service in the arts and humanities.

The festival will begin at 2:30 p.m.Thursday, Sept. 29. Linda Wagner-Martin, who has written two books on Kingsolver, will read "'Keeping an Eye on Paradise': The Exuberance of Prodigal Summer." At 3:30 p.m. former Literary Festival honoree Meredith Sue Willis will present her paper on Kingsolver's most recent novel  The Lacuna, titled "Not Missing from The Lacuna: A Private Life in a Political World." Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. Ms. Kingsolver will read from her work.

The festival will conclude Friday afternoon, Sept. 30, with a third paper at 2:30 p.m. followed by an interview with Kingsolver. The paper, "'Disclosing the Heart of the Form': An Appreciation of Barbara Kingsolver's Nonfiction," will be presented by Sandra Ballard, editor of Appalachian Journal. Steve Fisher, professor emeritus at Emory & Henry and a well-known scholar of Appalachian studies, will conduct the interview at 3:30 p.m.

All events will be held in Wiley Auditorium on the Emory & Henry campus. Events are free and the public is encouraged to attend.

About the Festival
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, an author who comes to campus for a reading and a public interview and who listens to two or three papers about her/his work.

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. Eight of the essays from these festivals were reprinted in An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature (2005). The interviews conducted at the festivals from 1983 to 2003 have been reprinted by the University of Tennessee Press in Appalachia and Beyond: Conversations with Writers from the Mountain South (2006).

Iron Mountain Review
Back issues of IMR may be ordered from the editor at a cost of $5 each, which includes the price of postage. Checks should be made payable to The Iron Mountain Review. For more information write Dr. John Lang, PO Box 64, Emory, VA 24327 or email jlang@ehc.edu

This event is part of the 175th Anniversary Celebration. For more information, visit www.ehc.edu/175.