星空传媒

星空传媒鈥檚 Literary Festival brings writers from across the country together every spring to discuss their craft with current Catamounts.

Last week鈥檚 celebration was the largest in 星空传媒 history and featured 22 different authors across a four-day schedule of events.

Those in attendance heard writers employed across the field discuss their works in intimate detail and share stories from their paths to getting published.

鈥淓very year, we aim to bring writers from within and beyond the region, writers from many different genres, so that we can offer the university and regional community a wide range of the literary world,鈥� said Jeremy Jones, director of the festival and professor of English. Jones is himself a published and award-winning nonfiction author.

鈥淧rofessor Jeremy Jones and crew do a magnificent job of creating a wide variety of events that make books come alive for audiences. There is a great literary community at 星空传媒 and the surrounding towns,鈥� said Aimee Nezhukumatathil, American poet, essayist and returning guest of the festival.

The festival is a collaboration between the Department of English Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost, the Division of Student Affairs, Campus Theme, the Visiting Scholar program, the Latino/a Studies program, the Museum of the Cherokee People and the North Carolina Arts Council.

For those lovers of language on our campus and beyond, we鈥檝e gathered a few pieces of advice from some of the authors who visited. More detailed author biographies and a full list of the authors in attendance can be found at this link.

鈥淚'd say to just get started (most first drafts are pretty bad!) and find community and support as soon as possible. It took me 13 years to be published, and I did my best to enjoy learning the craft, the publishing business and making writer friends along the way. Also, once you're published, the challenges don't go away. So just write what you love to read, support your writer friends and get going.鈥�

Vanessa Lillie 鈥� USA Today bestselling thriller novelist

鈥淭olerate your own mediocrity to get your first draft done and then believe in the optimism of revision.  I also think often of the advice of Robert Louis Stevenson, one of my favorite Scottish writers: 鈥楻ead good authors with passionate attention, refrain altogether from reading bad ones.鈥欌��

Margot Livesey 鈥� literary fiction writer, Guggenheim Fellow, PEN New England Award winner

鈥淚 grew up in Mississippi in the 鈥�50s and 鈥�60s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement. What I saw around me didn鈥檛 interest me, though it interested the rest of the country and much of the world. I just saw a dusty, poverty-stricken place that I wanted to escape from. So it might be ironic that while I have spent nearly all of my adult life in California, Massachusetts and Poland, I have written primarily about the place that I came from. Sometimes distance makes things come into focus. I tell young writers to watch, listen and remember. Notice small details, remember sounds and smells, the peculiar phrase.鈥�

Steve Yarbrough 鈥� novelist and short story writer, PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, Massachusetts Book Award winner

鈥淲riting a memoir gives the author an opportunity to counter the mainstream story, reclaim the pejorative, and push back against cultural scripts. The memoirist becomes an individual, gaining power over her life through the shaping of truth. To the fledgling memoirist: Be bold. In writing your stories, you will find your vulnerabilities transform into superpowers. Not only will you connect with other human beings, but you will come to forgive yourself and understand your own humanity.鈥�

Deborah Jackson Taffa 鈥� memoirist, National Book Award finalist