Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute will host Ron Rash, author of Serena, for the 2023 Laurette LePrevost Writers Symposium.
A reading and discussion session, Mountains and Memory: A Reading by Ron Rash, will be held on Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 7 p.m. at the J.E. Broyhill Civic Center in Lenoir. The event is free and open to the public.
The Caldwell Campus will host a book club discussion of selected short stories by Rash on March 14, 2023 in the LRC Multipurpose Room at 2:30 p.m. and a discussion of Serena on March 21, 2023 at 2:30 p.m. in the LRC Multipurpose Room. The Watauga Campus is honored to host a presentation by the Smoky Mountains National Park on Monday, March 20, 2023 at 1 p.m. in W372-Room 113, and will also host a book club discussion of Serena on Thursday, March 23, 2023 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. in the Student Commons Room (Bldg. W460). The book club events on both campuses are also free and open to all students and the public and include light refreshments. A Crafts of Appalachia event will be held on the Caldwell Campus on March 16, 2023 in the LRC Multipurpose Room from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. for all students, faculty and staff to learn about and make crafts that are traditional to the Appalachian Mountains.
Drawing inspiration from life in the Appalachian Mountains, both in the past and present, Rash has authored multiple prizewinning and bestselling novels including Serena, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight. He has won numerous awards and has twice been a PEN/Faulkner finalist. His short story collection, Burning Bright, won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He has received the O. Henry Prize twice and is a professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University. The Savannah Morning News has written that in “every Rash book, the reader is treated to countless moments of stunning illumination on the human condition.” More information is available at the author’s website: www.ronrashwriter.com
Ron Rash
Laurette LePrevost, former Dean of Arts and Sciences for CCC&TI, was instrumental in building the Writers Symposium into an annual event that has brought in such renowned writers as Maya Angelou, Ernest Gaines, Nikki Giovanni, Robert Morgan and Clyde Edgerton. Under her leadership and guidance, CCC&TI’s symposium has become the longest-running consecutively held Writers Symposium in western North Carolina and one of the longest in the Southeast. The Writers Symposium series was renamed in her honor when she retired in 2004.
Support for the Laurette LePrevost Writers Symposium is provided by the Foundation of Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute.