SEARCY, Ark.
The Harding University English Department will host Gildner Thursday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. in Cone Chapel at Harding. The event will be free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served, and a book signing and question-and-answer session will follow.
“His subject matter is nature and ordinary people, two things most of us can relate to,” Dr. John Williams, Harding English Department chair and professor of English, said. “But he also provides telling insights into his subjects, performing well the artistic role of ‘defamiliarizing’ the ordinary things and people of life to show their unique value.”
Gildner has published more than 20 books in all the major genres, ranging from fiction to nonfiction to poetry, and has received a National Magazine Award for Fiction, Pushcart Prizes in Fiction and Nonfiction, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams and Theodore Roethke Poetry Prizes, and the Iowa Poetry Prize.
Gildner’s campus visit is part of a special tour he and his wife, Michele, are taking part in, a trek from their home in Idaho to Athens, Ga., to participate in a ceremony Oct. 13-14 sponsored by The Georgia Review honoring the late Raymond Andrews, a Georgia writer and friend of Gildner’s.
The English Department will also host their annual Fall Literary Festival Thursday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. in the American Studies Building. The festival, now in its 10th year, will host poetry readings from students in the department’s creative writing groups, Scribblers and Souvenirs, and guests from the White County Creative Writers Group. The event will also feature refreshments and games. The festival is open to anyone who enjoys poetry, fiction or nonfiction.
For more information about Gildner’s appearance or the festival, contact the English department at 501-279-4421.
— Prestigious literary critics from the Georgia Review to the New York Times have praised writer and poet Gary Gildner throughout his writing career. Among his most recognized books, “The Warsaw Sparks” recounts his experiences as an ex-baseball player coaching in communist Poland in the 1980s. Other books he is well known for are “Blue Like the Heavens,” published in 1984 as his first book, and “My Grandfather’s Book,” which was named a Top 10 University Press Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine.