On Nov. 3 and 4, the USC Union Auditorium will resonate with the stories, songs, and poems of a coterie of outstanding authors from Tennessee, North Carolina, and right here in Union, SC during the eleventh annual Upcountry Literary Festival.
Fredrick Tucker (pictured above), a nationally recognized author and historian from Duncan, SC, will present at 10:30 AM on Saturday, Nov 4. Tucker can claim his Union tie through his late mother, Ruth Ann Cogdell Tucker, who was born and grew up in the Monarch community, later moving to Duncan, where she served for many years as a teacher in Spartanburg County. Mrs. Tucker died earlier this year at age ninety-two, and in tribute her son this summer conducted an exhibition of his mother’s memorabilia at the Union County Arts Council, including instances of her stylish and colorful wardrobe. The exhibition was a resounding success, attracting many viewers.
Tucker has written extensively of Duncan and Union history and is also the author of biographies of Broadway and TV sitcom actress Alice Pearce (best known for her supporting role as Gladys Kravitz on the Bewitched series) and of Verna Felton, a voice artist who earned an Emmy nomination for her supporting role on the show December Bride. Both books stemmed from Tucker’s life-long love of the supporting players on major American TV comedies. Fredrick Tucker is a retired social studies/history teacher and still resides in Duncan. He will present on Saturday, Nov. 4 at 10:30 AM.
Many of these writers make up the English faculty of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. Chief among them is poet and scholar Jesse Graves, a Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, native whose collections include Merciful Days, Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pines, and Basin Ghosts. His latest publication is Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place. Of Graves work, famed novelist and poet Ron Rash has written, “These poems have the music, wisdom, and singular voice of a talent fully realized, and make abundantly clear that Jesse Graves is one of America’s finest young poets.” Graves’ latest project is editing a series of poetry anthologies based in each of the fifty states, including South Carolina. Randy Ivey, director of the Upcountry Literary Festival, remarked that “Jesse Graves is that rare thing: an artist.”
Graves’ graduate student at ETSU, Rieppe Moore, a Columbia, SC, native who now lives and farms in eastern Tennessee, will make his second appearance at the festival this year and will receive The Tandy R. Willis Award for Most Promising Writer, an honor named after the late and long-time USCU professor of English. Rieppe, an upcoming poet, has seen his work recently published in such prestigious venues as Still: The Journal and Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Joining their ETSU brethren onstage the same weekend will be Thomas Alan Holmes, poet and musician, whose first collection, In the Backhoe’s Shadow, was published last year, and Michael Cody, a novelist whose story collection Twilight Reeling earned much acclaim upon its publication in 2021.
Returning to USCU after an absence, former Barton College professor and Tennessee native Jim Clark. Clark lives in Wilson, NC. In 2014, his play The Girl with the Faraway Eyes was produced by the USCU Players.
Valerie “Val” Nieman hails from Greensboro, NC, and will make her second appearance at the Upcountry Literary Festival in March. Poet and novelist, she recently received The Walter Raleigh Prize, the highest honor given to a NC author; in winning the award she joins the company of such literary titans as Fred Chappell and Reynolds Price. Her most recent work is In the Lonely Backwater, a young adult murder mystery. Her other books include To the Bones and Leopard Lady. Val will engage in a colloquy with fellow NC novelist Marjorie Hudson on the craft of fiction during Saturday’s session. An Illinois native, Hudson moved to North Carolina and became a copy editor for Algonquin Books. “I grew up in the North,” she writes on her website, “but I got here as fast as I could.” Her novel Indigo Fields has won much praise for the vividness of its prose and its evocation of place. New York Times best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd called it “mesmerizing.”
The festival will also feature a presentation by Union native Hester Booker. She was born and brought up in the last vestiges of the segregated South but chose not to be crushed by such oppression. Instead, she chose to thrive. She recounts her struggles during this time and her ultimate triumph in her first book, an autobiography, Instrumentally Sound, from Dorrance Publishing. Booker will present her story and its lessons on Friday, Nov. 3 at 1:50PM
According to the publisher, “Instrumentally Sound is a journey through childhood to adulthood as experienced by author Hester Booker. In her memoir, she shares her uplifting experiences growing up in the segregated school system and the happiness that occurred in a poverty-stricken situation. There is light in even the most challenging of situations.” Booker, now retired, was a long-time employee of the Union County school system, helping to facilitate many school sporting events.
USC Union is pleased to welcome internationally acclaimed novelist, story writer, teacher, and humorist George Singleton to its campus on Nov. 3 as the keynote speaker at the festival. Born in California, Singleton was raised in Greenwood, SC, and spent many years as writing instructor at the Governor’s School for the Arts in Greenville. He is recently retired from Wofford. One of the South’s, indeed the nation’s, leading comic writers, he has authored numerous story collections, two novels, and an instructional guide to writing. Among his titles are The Half-Mammals of Dixie, These People Are Us, When Dogs Chase Cars, Novel: A Novel, and, most recently, You Want More, the latter a selection of his best short fiction. In the Southern Review of Books, Jonathan Haupt, head of the Pat Conroy Center in Beaufort and former director of the University of South Carolina Press, has called Singleton “one of the most brilliantly comedic writers of our time and a defining voice of our complicated and often contradictory contemporary southern experience.”
A member of the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers, Singleton resides in Spartanburg and is an enthusiastic habitué of Midway BBQ in Union. Also on Friday, Joey Holland of Greenville will return to the festival for the second time. The author of four books, the most recent one Choose Your Medicine, Holland uses his work to explore the experiences of those addicted to drugs. He will present at 1:10 PM
Local blues legend Freddie Vanderford will close out Friday’s session.
The Upcountry Literary Festival was founded in 2011 in an effort to make clear the continuing relevance of the printed word in the digital age and to interest people, particularly the young, in reading. Past presenters include such internationally-renowned authors as Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, and Dori Sanders. After a four-year hiatus forced by Covid-19, the Upcountry Literary Festival at USC Union will return live to the stage in the USCU Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. On Friday, Nov 3, the event will run from 1:00PM to 5:00PM, on Saturday, Nov 4 from 9:00AM to 1:00PM. For more information on the Upcountry Literary Festival, please contact Randy Ivey at 864-441-7279 or at rivey@mailbox.sc.edu.
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