Meetings

Summer at FPL Once, Twice, Thrice with Authors and Heroes

Posted on by Nancy Hartney

Summertime and Fayetteville Public Library offers heroes, heroines and escapes from the ordinary with three diverse author events.

Take Wednesday, June 3. The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan unfolds at 6:00pm in the Fayetteville Public Library. This Giller Prize nomined novel examines loss and pain and survival. The 1985 Air India crash left families of the 329 victims that died forever grieving, never quite able to recover. Set in 2001-2005, a fictionalized psychologist Ashwin Rao writes a book about the crash, twenty years after the fact. It is through Rao’s eyes that Ms. Viswanathan examines the human cost of the crash. And by extension, any abrupt, senseless loss of life. A member of the UA Creative Writing Program faculty, Viswanathan will read from the Ever After of Ashwin Rao and discuss her creative writing process.

On June 17, eye witness Roy Reed discusses Selma, Alabama during the 1965 Freedom March. A New York Times reporter, he stood on the front lines of the growing civil rights movement. He shares his thoughts, memories, and reactions to those pivotal and bloody times as depicted in the 2015 film Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay and starring David Oyelowo. KUAF Kyle Kellams interviews Reed about his years covering the civil rights movement in a casual format that gets to the story behind the story.

Mid-July Robert Jackson Bennett discusses ‘The Word as Art.’ A multi-award winning author, he discuss writing through the lens of his latest novel City of Stairs on July 15. With five novels and a sixth scheduled for release 2016, his based-in-reality tales of buried histories, secrets, and murder float somewhere between sci-fi/fantasy, horror, and historical fiction. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Robert Jackson Bennett attended University of Texas Austin and remained a resident after falling in love with the area. Ultimately, Bennett finds the biggest reward comes from readers sharing his imaginative stories with others.

The three author events, held in the Walker Community Room, are free and open to the public. Movie and books are available for circulation.

Nancy Hartney writes fiction, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction articles. Her full bio can be found at NancyHartney.com.