On Friday, Oct. 21, 2016 Jill McCorkle and Elizabeth Cox will be at Belfair Plantation Club at noon as a part of USCB’s Lunch with Author Series. Tickets are $42 and includes lunch. For more information or to get tickets, go to uscbcenterforthearts.com.
Jill McCorkle
Five of Jill McCorkle’s books have been named “New York Times” notable books. Her first novel in 17 years, “Life After Life,” is alive with the daily triumphs and challenges of the residents and staff of Pine Haven Estates, a retirement facility in Fulton, North Carolina. McCorkle puts her finger on the pulse of every character’s strengths, weaknesses, and secrets.
Pine Haven is home to many of Fulton, North Carolina’s older citizens. McCorkle connects the lives of the unlikely residents and even more unlikely caregivers through their present circumstances, their pasts, and, in some cases, their deaths. She celebrates the blessings and wisdom of later life and infuses this remarkable novel with hope and laughter.
McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She currently teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at NC State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and resides in Hillsborough, North Carolina with her husband.
Elizabeth Cox
“A Question of Mercy” is the fifth novel from award winning writer, Elizabeth Cox. In the novel, Cox challenges notions of individual freedom and responsibility against a backdrop of questionable practices governing treatment of the mentally disabled, stretching the breadth and limitations of the human heart to love and to forgive.
Adam Finney, a young man who is mentally disabled, faces sterilization and lobotomy in a state-supported asylum. When he is found dead in the French Broad River of rural North Carolina, his teenaged stepsister, Jess, is sought for questioning by their family and the police. Jess’s odyssey of escape across four states leads into dark territories of life-and- death moral choices where compassion and grace offer faint illumination but few answers. Through her vibrant depictions of characters in crisis and of the lush, natural landscapes of
her southern settings, Cox brings to the fore the moral, ethical, and seemingly unnatural decisions people face when caring for society’s weakest members.
Elizabeth Cox is the author of poetry and short story collections and four other novels, including Night Talk, winner of the Lillian Smith Award and a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has been recognized with the Robert Penn Warren Award, North Carolina Fiction Award, and has been inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Cox lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with her husband.
