Friday Evening at the festival

We don't have any events planned for the Friday evening of the festival... because there are so many other great things going on around town!

• The Parkway Playhouse is presenting My River, My Valley (see post below). Showtime at 7:30 pm.


• The Design Gallery hosts a public reception for the Slow Book Salon's show titled "Mountain Mosaic" to go along with the festival's theme. (From 5pm to 7pm)


• The TRAC Gallery is also hosting a public reception for their show focusing on the illustrations and children's works of area writers. (From 5pm to 8pm)

(The Design Gallery and the TRAC Gallery are within easy walking distance of each other.)

Weekend Drama

Parkway Playhouse Ends Season with Another New Play About Regional History

The Parkway Playhouse’s 63rd season will close with the North Carolina Premiere of Ron Osborn’stouching Southern play My River, My Valley. The production will open on September 3 and run Thursday, Friday andSaturday evenings through Sept 12. There will be a 2:00pm Matinee performance on September 5 at 2:00pm. Ticketsrange from $10 to $20 with discounts available for groups of 10 or more, senior citizens, students, and active military.To make reservations, call 828-682-4285 or visit the Parkway Playhouse website at www.parkwayplayhouse.com .

Inspired the events that led up to the relocation of mountain families to construct the Fontana Dam and the relocationof the residents in Butler, TN to build the Watagua dam, My River My Valley is set along the NorthCarolina/Tennessee/Virginia border in 1941. The central characters are two sisters who are in their 50’s and early 60’sand their future is uncertain. Over the course of the play the two women, played by local actresses Bunnie McIntoshand Brenda Sparks-Howell, argue, laugh, sing, dance, and eventually find their own paths. The cast also features RobStorrs, a Green Mountain resident, who has appeared regularly on the Parkway Playhouse stage since 2004, as the localsheriff.The winner of the Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Play festival in 2005, the show received its world premiere in 2006.Producing Artistic Director, Andrew Gall, who was working on a production at the Barter Theatre at the time, wasthunderstruck by the characters and the play.

The Parkway Playhouse production is the first time award-winning andnationally produced writer Ron Osborn has given the rights to another theatre outside of the Barter.“I wanted to do this play because of its regional and local connection in addition to the fact that it had great opportunities for local performers” said Gall, who is directing the production. “The connection the characters have totheir home and the land they live on is something we still relate to, even though we are a generation removed. This play is something that stuck with me from the staged reading I saw 4 years ago, and I am anxious to share it with ouraudience. We lucked out getting the cast we have and I hope people will make some time to come and see it.”

My River My Valley is the third new play that the Parkway Playhouse has produced this season. (The other two being thenew musical comedy Married Alive! and Esley which told the story of local musical prodigy Lesley Riddle.) In 2008, theParkway Playhouse presented Lunch At the Piccadilly which was a new musical and that show has gone on to beproduced elsewhere as a result of the production in Burnsville.

“We have had good luck with new plays” said Gall. “I think our audience likes the fact that we are able to produce thestandards, like Oklahoma! and The Man Who Came to Dinner but the idea of seeing plays that get their start here andare based on stories about our community and our heritage is something that has tremendous appeal and it issomething that we can and will continue to devote time to. We will continue to produce audience favorites as well butthere are some great stories about this community that are just as exciting and are important to tell.”

The Parkway Playhouse’s 2009 Season is sponsored by Young & McQueen Grading Company, Carolina First Bank, theNorth Carolina Arts Council, and the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area.

Metamorphosis of a Mosaic

First, the photo: taken by Bob Brandt (festival photographer and president of the Yancey County Literarcy Council) of the view from his back porch on Moonshine Mountain in Burnsville.

Then, Britt Kaufmann (who does all the graphic art for the festival) applied the stained-glass-window filter to it in Photoshop to create the bookmarks you can pick up at libraries and bookstores.
It was used in advertising posters too...



But lo and behold, quilter Corinne Shilling saw the image and though it looked like a quilt...

Corinne has given this wall hanging to the planning committee to help raise funds for the 2010 festival. There will be a silent auction during this year's events with the winner being announced at the end of the festival.

And here's a peek at next year's bookmark and image to go with the theme "Coming Home." I understand there's already a fiber artist drawing up sketches...

Porch, door and dog (Mr. Carmichael) courtesy of festival scheduler Lucy Doll.

PayPal now functional for registrations.

We've had several registratons coming in via our new paypal method and it all seems to be working just fine. Hooray!

Visit our registration page to give it a try.

Ann Pancake

Read Rob Neufeld's August 9 review of Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake. (click here)

May 14 Press Release

“Mountain Mosaic” is the guiding theme for the 4th annual

Carolina Mountains Literary Festival

Burnsville, NC, May 14, 2009 – The fifty authors gathering in Burnsville this September 11 and 12 have been selected around the 2009 theme Mountain Mosaic. "Almost all of us came from someplace else. Our ancestors left their homes and came to build a new land. Now that new land is our home," says Little Jim in Gloria Houston's children's book.

Rather than a melting pot, the people and authors are a Mountain Mosaic created by the many vibrant colors and heritages that make up Western North Carolina. Viewing this Mountain Mosaic up close, one can celebrate individual differences. Viewing it from afar, one can see how the individuality of each piece contributes to a more beautiful whole.

The weekend will be filled with simultaneous readings, workshops, book signings, panel discussions, performances, and Q&A sessions. The keynote panel, We All Come from Someplace Else, will be moderated by Gloria Houston and include noted Cherokee historian Robert Conley; children’s author Eleanora Tate; Melungeon scholar Wayne Winkler; and journalist Paul Cuadros. Each of these authors, even though they are in the region now, will address how being from Someplace Else influenced their writing. This panel, the focal point of the weekend, is on Friday morning and also features the commissioned choral piece by local composer Thom Koch.

The final event is the Saturday evening ticketed banquet with keynote talk by Ann Pancake. A native of West Virginia, Pancake’s novel Strange as this Weather Has Been is set in a town polluted by mountain top removal. She is an activist and critically acclaimed writer, having received the Weatherford Award for the best work of fiction about Appalachia published in 2007 given by the Appalachian Studies Association.

“One thing that makes our festival different from others is that we’re geared to readers first,” says planning committee member Britt Kaufmann. The festival is also unique since it is not held at an academic center, nor does it allow outside vendors to set up booths. Only Malaprop’s is on site to sell the authors’ books. “We do this to keep the emphasis on the ideas in the literature. If people do want to buy remembrances from the weekend, other than books, we’d like them to do it in our local shops. We want the festival to help our downtown.”

The mission of the festival is to bring together authors, readers of all ages, novice writers, listeners and learners in small, intimate settings. The goal is that the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival will inspire people to read more, write more, and contribute positively to society through the literary arts.

To see a complete list of authors and a schedule for the weekend visit cmlitfest.org.

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Contact:
Carolina Mountains Literary Festival
PO Box 355
Burnsville, NC 28714
(828) 682-4476
cmlitfest@gmail.com

Website Woes

To find our website, you can always check HERE.

The trouble is that I'm not quite technologically with-it enough to integrate both the new Google Sites interface and the Namecheap CNAME records sub-domain information. And every time I try a new solution I need to wait 24-48 hours for the servers to re-align to see if it'll work. Frankly, I'm beginning to think I need to wait until the stars align before I try this again.

Patience please.

Britt