Author to Author Exhibit Features Literary Correspondence
Author to Author:
Literary Letters from the Southern Historical Collection
Fourth floor of Wilson Library
Aug. 18-Sept. 30, 2009
Free and open to the public
Exhibit information: Biff Hollingsworth, (919) 962-1345
In conjunction with the North Carolina Literary Festival, Sept. 10-13, 2009
William Faulkner with arm around Milton "Ab" Abernethy,
publisher of Contempo, in Chapel Hill, 1931.
North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.
Examples of correspondence among some of the South's best-known authors will be on display in the Southern Historical Collection of UNC's Wilson Library from Aug. 18 through Sept. 30.
The free, public exhibit, Author to Author: Literary Letters from the Southern Historical Collection, illuminates ties within the community of Southern writers during much of the twentieth century.
On view will be original letters by authors including Clyde Edgerton, Gail Godwin, Langston Hughes and Jill McCorkle. Photographs from the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) will also be included.
"These are some of the great literary lions of our region," said Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist in the SHC. Hollingsworth said that the letters show how the authors built and maintained community by writing to one another, even as many of them moved far from the South.
Hollingsworth said the correspondence reveals the support and motivation—and sometimes friendly competition—that the writers provided to one another. In a 1950 letter to Walker Percy, for example, Shelby Foote proudly confides himself to be "with book."
The exhibit also highlights the complex relationships and strong personalities of the figures involved. A 1932 "cease and desist" letter from William Faulkner instructs the Chapel Hill literary magazine Contempo not to list Faulkner as an associate publisher; a photograph from the same period shows Faulkner hugging Contempo's publisher.
Author to Author adds depth to the Wilson Library exhibit Four from between the Wars: Paul Green, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Ruark, and Walker Percy, on view in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room of Wilson Library through Sept. 30. Correspondence from Green, Wolfe, Ruark and Percy are all part of the SHC exhibit.
Both exhibits complement the North Carolina Literary Festival, hosted by the Library on the UNC campus Sept. 10-13.
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