New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Award Charles Frazier will be joined by a local favorite, author Brian Lee Knopp, to keynote the Literacy Council’s Authors for Literacy Event on August 23, 2013.
Charles Frazier is best known for Cold Mountain, the 1997 historical
novel that won the National Book Award
for Fiction. It tells the story of W. P. Inman, a wounded deserter from the
Confederate army near the end of the American Civil War who walks for months to
return to Ada Monroe, the love of his life. It was Charles Frazier's first
novel and a major bestseller, selling roughly three million copies worldwide. Cold Mountain was later adapted into an
award-winning film of the same name. The real W. P. Inman was Frazier's
great-great-uncle, who lived near the real Cold Mountain, now within the Pisgah
National Forest in Haywood County, North Carolina. Frazier’s captivating second
and third novels, Thirteen Moons and Nightwoods, also take place in the
Southern Appalachians and tell poetic stories of our region’s complex history.
Frazier will be joined in his presentation by the local,
Malaprops-bestselling author Brian Lee Knopp. Knopp penned Mayhem in Mayberry, which chronicles the adventures of a small-town
private investigator, and co-authored the collaborative novel Naked Came the Leaf Peeper. Both Knopp
and Frazier have unique and intimate perspectives on Western North Carolina’s
Southern Appalachian culture.
The evening will open with a cocktail hour silent auction,
to include distinctive art and crafts, autographed and rare books, and
priceless opportunities to enjoy excursions in Asheville and beyond. Following
the cocktail hour, guests will enjoy a three-course dinner, Frazier and Knopp’s
presentation, and a book signing.
Frazier is a longtime
supporter of literacy. In Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier’s protagonist
Will Cooper says, “The way I look at it,
we have all been illiterate.
Only a few of us stay that way, usually for the worst of reasons. Poverty in
some cases. Law in others, at least back in the day of slavery.”
While this novel took place in the mid-1800s, the connection between
illiteracy and poverty remains today. Nearly 20% of adults in Buncombe County
do not have a high school diploma/GED, and one in 10 adults cannot read at or
above a basic level. These individuals are twice as likely to live in poverty
as those who have received a high school diploma.
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