Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook / Edition 1

by Georgann Eubanks

Overview

This guidebook is the first of three regional volumes that invite residents and out-of-state visitors to explore North Carolina while reading literature from our state's finest writers. Organized geographically through a series of eighteen half-day and day-long tours in the western part of the state, the book directs curious travelers to the historic sites where Tar Heel authors have lived and worked. Along the way, travelers can read outstanding excerpts from the writers, evoking the places, customs, colloquialisms, and characters that figure prominently in their poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and plays. More than 170 writers from the past and present are featured in this volume, including Sequoyah, Elizabeth Spencer, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Robert Morgan, William Bartram, Gail Godwin, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Tyler, Lillian Jackson Braun, Nina Simone, and Romulus Linney. Each tour provides information about the libraries, museums, colleges, bookstores, and other venues open to the public where writers regularly present their work or are represented in exhibits, events, performances, and festivals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807858332
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/29/2007
Edition description:	1
Pages:	436
Sales rank:	272,726
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Georgann Eubanks is a writer, teacher, and consultant to nonprofit groups across the country. She is director of the Table Rock Writers Workshop, was a founder of the North Carolina Writers' Network, and is past chair of the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Table of Contents

Preface     vii
The Southern Mountains: Place     1
Black Mountain: Montreat: Swannanoa     4
Canton: Cold Mountain: Lake Logan: Balsam     23
Sylva: Dillsboro: Cullowhee: Highlands     38
Franklin: Hayesville: Brasstown: Murphy: Texana     62
Robbinsville: Cherohala Skyway: Fontana: Almond: Nantahala Gorge     81
Bryson City: Cherokee: Great Smoky Mountains National Park     102
Waynesville: Hot Springs: Marshall: Mars Hill     117
Weaverville and North Asheville     148
Downtown and South Asheville     180
Brevard: Rosman: Green River: Zirconia: Flat Rock: Hendersonville     206
The Northern Mountains and Foothills: Voice     231
Burnsville: Micaville: Celo: Mount Mitchell     235
Old Fort: Chimney Rock: Lake Lure: Tryon     253
Rutherfordton: Spindale: Forest City: Shelby     279
Lincolnton: Hickory: Moravian Falls     294
Wilkesboro: Happy Valley: Blowing Rock: Linville Falls: Morganton     309
Marion: Little Switzerland: Spruce Pine: Penland: Bandana: Kona: Bakersville: Roan Mountain: Banner Elk     338
Grandfather Mountain: Crossnore: Valle Crucis: Vilas: Boone     364
Todd: West Jefferson: Jefferson: Crumpler: Sparta: RoaringGap     377
Acknowledgments     393
Photographer's Note     395
A Note on the North Carolina Literary Trails Program     397
Permissions     399
Index     403

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Georgann Eubanks proves to be the perfect tour guide—knowledgeable, companionable, insightful, and often surprising. Who knew about Anne Tyler's very interesting connection to Celo, for instance? A perfect book for the armchair traveler as well as the actual tourist.—Lee Smith



Georgann Eubanks has not written a guidebook; she has furnished a cheerful and personable and wonderfully informed companion to take us along the literary leafy tracks and briary bypaths of the North Carolina mountains. Welcome one and all, reader and traveler, to blue-green vistas of pleasure!—Fred Chappell

Editorial Reviews

Takes the reader into shaded byways of fascinating obscurity or simply personal aspects of the region's writers and writing. There is a super-highway of information to be found on the gravel roads and winding tracks of North Carolina's mountains. . . . A welcome addition to the ever-lengthening shelf of worthwhile works about the state's rich literary heritage.—North Carolina Literary Review



Links the lives of 170 of North Carolina's visiting and native writers with mountain region destinations.—Carolina Country



A unique twist to common travel guidebooks. . . . [Eubanks] makes familiar destinations new again.—Our State



Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains underscores the state's rich literary legacy that's ongoing, and introduces folks to writers' work they may want to further explore.—Durham Herald-Sun



Not just a guidebook but a wealth of information, images, book and article excerpts, the Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook, written by Georgann Eubanks, would be worth reading even if you weren't traveling.—Home & Away Magazine

From the Publisher