Ben
Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which will be
released this fall as a feature film, headlines the Visiting Writers Series at
UNC Asheville with a free public talk on Thursday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. in UNC
Asheville’s Reuter Center. A conversation with UNC Asheville’s
Writer-in-Residence Wiley Cash will conclude the talk.
Books
will be available to purchase before and the event, with a book signing to
follow. Readers can hear from the author less than two months before the film
release date of Nov. 11.
Fountain’s
satiric novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, set in Texas during the
war in Iraq, won the National Book Critics Award and was a National Book Award
finalist. The story follows the surviving members of the fictional heroic Bravo
Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive “Victory Tour.” For
the film, directed by Oscar-winner Ang Lee, this culminating halftime show
provides the backdrop for flashbacks to reveal what really happened to
19-year-old private Billy Lynn.
A
North Carolina native who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and then Duke
University Law School, Fountain worked as an attorney before focusing full-time
on his writing. His first book, the short story collection Brief Encounters
with Che Guevara, won the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Fountain’s
talk begins the 2016-17 Visiting Writers Series at UNC Asheville, organized by
Writer-in-Residence and UNC Asheville alumnus Wiley Cash, who is also the
best-selling author of This Dark Road to Mercy and A Land More Kind
than Home. Author and UNC Asheville alumna Leigh Ann Henion will read as
part of this series on Nov. 10; poet Camille Dungy and novelist Chinelo
Okparanta will visit campus during the spring semester.
“It’s
an incredible time to be part of the literary arts at UNC Asheville. Over the
course of this academic year our students and local community are going to have
numerous opportunities to engage with well known, world-class authors. I’m
thrilled that Ben Fountain will kick-off this series just a few weeks before
his film, which is already receiving major awards buzz, is released in theaters
across the country,” said Cash.
