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Browse, shop, & connect with local authors! Join us for our third annual local author event renamed after the very first Blount County Public Library librarian, Anna Belle Smith! This year, we are partnering with Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont to provide optional breakout sessions hosted by the guest author and co-directors of the Tremont Writers Conference. Authors will have priority seating for these sessions, but they are also open to the public as space is available.
9:30 - 10:15 AM: Writing Home with Jeremy Lloyd (library grounds, meet in foyer) - Modern people tend to think of themselves as something other than a part of what today we call “nature” or the “environment.” This dualistic view has led to alienation from and abuse of what was once widely regarded as “Creation.” Locating sources for re-enchantment in our lives becomes possible when we reflect on the wealth of stories each of us has to share about the people, objects, and creatures that dwell in the places we call home. We’ll do just this during this session while practicing a simple exercise to awaken our imaginations and using the library grounds outdoors for inspiration. Jeremy Lloyd teaches on the faculty of Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, where he designs and facilitates immersive, weeklong experiences in nature inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park for learners ages nine to ninety. He is the author of A Home in Walker Valley: The Story of Tremont, and his work has appeared in publications such as Sierra, Gray’s Sporting Journal, High Country News, The Sun, Fourth Genre, North Carolina Literary Review, Smokies Life, and several anthologies. A musician, he co-directs the Tremont Writers Conference and lives with his family on the Little River.
10:30 - 11:15 AM: Poet Frank X Walker (Learning Lab) - Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is the author of 13 collections of poetry and the children’s book, A is for Affrilachia.
10:30 - 11:15 AM: Publishing to Protect a Park with Frances Figart (Sharon Lawson Room) - As the creative services director for Smokies Life, an educational nonprofit partner to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Frances Figart and her team are responsible for producing a magazine, a blog, a regular newspaper column, books and brochures, and a plethora of other creative projects. Learn how her work helps to protect life in the park, how she came to co-direct the Tremont Writers Conference, and how she accidentally became a children’s book author along the way. Frances Figart directs the creative team at Smokies Life, edits Smokies Life Journal and Smokies LIVE blog, publishes books and brochures, and curates a column, “Word from the Smokies,” which appears regularly in the Asheville Citizen Times and Smoky Mountain News. She has authored three books for young readers: a road ecology fable, A Search for Safe Passage, that won Publication of the Year in 2022 from the Public Lands Alliance; Mabel Meets a Black Bear, published in 2023 to educate readers about how to be BearWise; and Camilla and the Caterpillars (September 2024), supporting the Homegrown National Park movement that advocates for the cultivation of native plants and trees on private lands to strengthen species diversity.
Location: BCPL Main Gallery
This event is free and open to the public.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
508 N Cusick St, Maryville, TN, United States, Tennessee 37804
