Authors shine at Literary Festival

The thing that surprised me most about the N.C. Literary Festival was that it wasn't more packed than it was. Seats were available at all the events I attended, and the streets, restaurants and parking lots were not jam-packed, as they are on football weekends. For those of us who attended, however, the weekend was a delightful smorgasbord of words and the authors who arrange them beautifully.

I had attended the last Literary Festival in Chapel Hill in 2002 and was eager for this reprise. I was not disappointed. Although I did not attend any of the ticketed keynote events and confined my visit to Saturday only, the day was fulfilling and intellectually nourishing. I missed John Grisham, poet James Applewhite (who grew up in Stantonsburg and teaches at Duke) and performances of Lee Smith's "Good Ol' Girls" and Clyde Edgerton's "The Bible Salesman," but I heard readings by some authors I admire and discovered at least one new author who was a serendipitous surprise.

Sessions focused on the milieu of North Carolina history and the literary portrayal of that history. I was particularly interested in the session on Southern Mills, which featured Michael Chitwood, whose "The Weave Room" is a collection of poems about a textile mill. Ron Rash, whose "Eureka Mill" is a painfully honest look at a textile mill through a poet's eye, was featured in a separate session with Lee Smith about Southern storytelling. In the mills session, I discovered Barbara Presnell, whose poetry in "Piece Work" captures the voices of textile mill workers.

In a later session, former state poet laureate Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan (author of "Gap Creek" and "Boone") and young poet Jesse Graves read poems that evoked the uniqueness of the Southern experience. I found myself wanting to devour all the words in all the books that were for sale in tents outside the lecture halls, but I reminded myself of the stack of books already standing by my bedside and aligned on bookshelves that I have vowed to read. And I wanted the story told of life on the mill villages that had marked the transition from the agrarian South to the cities of the New South. In the early 20th century, nearly all North Carolinians had a common experience either on farms or in mill villages. I asked Chitwood if he knew of any great novels about textile mills, and he mentioned the late Doug Marlette's "The Bridge" — a good but not great first novel that deals with memories and denials about a violent union campaign at a mill. Doris Betts (who also spoke at the festival) wrote "The Scarlet Thread," which is set in a textile mill but is out of print. The setting is ripe for some great novelist.

We bought Rash's "Serena" and Presnell's "Piece Work" but did not buy either of Elizabeth Edwards' books, "Saving Graces" and "Resilience." Her session, the last one of the day for my wife and me, packed the sanctuary at University Methodist Church. Edwards spoke openly and frankly about the loss of her teenage son, Wade, in an automobile accident and admiringly about her father, a Navy officer and athlete who suffered a debilitating stroke but exceeded doctors' dire prognosis. She also spoke in general terms about having "my life explode on the pages of tabloids" last year. She was already at work on "Resilience" when her husband's sordid affair became tabloid fodder, and she told her editor she couldn't continue the project. But then she realized this painful episode was relevant to her theme of "Resilience," and she included her reaction to the personal crisis. Edwards is my UNC classmate (though I've never met her), and I have wanted to read her books but never got around to it. Her calm honesty and wit in tragic circumstances make me want to read her books even more.

This Literary Festival may have packed too much into too short a time, but for the hundreds, maybe thousands, who attended, it was a delight for the eyes and ears. Literature is an art of equal standing with music, painting or sculpture, at least as capable of expanding the mind and inspiring the soul. On Saturday, Chapel Hill became a museum to North Carolina's contributions to the best of this art.