|
Blanton, Bunn, Bob to be at Saturday book fair
There’s one main problem with trying to write about what is shaping up to be the best-ever Great Smoky Mountain Book Fair: too many authors, too little space.
Saturday’s event will bring some 60 authors to town, and the list of regional writers is distinguished and varied – and too lengthy to adequately cover in one column.
We could talk about writers who live somewhere else but write about Jackson County. A column like that could include John Lane of South Carolina, who writes about southern Jackson County’s Chattooga River, or California’s Kerry Madden, whose young adult novels are set in Maggie Valley, allowing her characters to venture inside our borders. We could also pick a theme like nature and focus on authors like Lane and Bryson City naturalists George and Elizabeth Ellison.
What we’re going to do instead is pick a letter, and the one we’ve chosen is “B,” which, according to the Ruralite Cafe’s 2003 Jackson County alphabet, stands for Beta, where author Curtis Blanton once went to school, and for “Balsam Mountain English,” which is the name he gives to the language he uses in his books based on his Jackson County boyhood.
B also stands for (the Rev. John) Bunn and Bob (Terrell), two other authors who will be at Saturday’s book fair at Sylva First United Methodist Church, but we’ll get to them in a minute.
Blanton, who was City Lights’ Bookstore’s best-selling author last year, has written “Tales from the Porch” and “Fireside Tales,” which are both illustrated by his longtime friend, Jim Sellers of Sylva.
While Blanton’s first book (“Tales from the Porch”) is taken directly from the people and experiences he remembers from growing up around Ochre Hill, he said “Fireside Tales” is more original but that it’s patterned on stories he remembers.
“Telling stories was about the only performing art available,” Blanton said of his younger years. “There were certain individuals in every community who were great storytellers. Some of their stories would be entertaining, and some would be a little scary.”
Blanton can still list the premier tale-tellers of his youth: Baxter Hoyle, Jack Hoyle, Price Dillard, Wayne Hoyle, Terrell Clayton, Sam Norman, Will Hooper, Bass Hooper, Ode Robinson, Ferry Mills, Rufe Queen and Rufe Keener.
According to Blanton, Sellers’ drawings help his stories come to life. Sellers could read each story and “zero in on the crux of it,” Blanton said.
As an example, he mentioned the subject of “Fireside’s” first story – a “wampus cat.”
“Nobody’s ever seen a wampus cat, but Jim drew one,” Blanton said. “Wampus cats were made-up critters grown-ups used to talk about to scare the young’uns,” Blanton said.
Blanton credits another local writer – and another of our “B’s” who will take part in Saturday’s book fair – Bob Terrell, with starting him on the path to a second book.
“After Bob read ‘Porch Tales,’ he told me that it was a good book and that I should get started on another one,” Blanton said. “He told me to have it come out next spring, so I did.”
Bob, an Addie (“A” in the Cafe county alphabet) native, needs no introduction to local readers. A longtime Asheville Citizen-Times columnist, he got his journalistic start here at The Sylva Herald. He told me a couple of years ago that he asked then-Publisher J.A. Gray, grandfather of current Publisher Steve Gray, for a job so he could learn about newspaper writing. He is even pictured in last week’s “Back Then” feature, which depicts a birthday party for then-15-year-old Bob and his then-74-year-old grandfather, Estes Bryson.
Bob’s most recent book is a Western, “Teaster,” based on the story behind a movie filmed recently at Maggie Valley’s Ghost Town in the Sky. (Interesting coincidence: Madden’s “Louisiana’s Song” features a trip to Ghost Town.) He has also written an autobiography, “Bob,” a book about Caney Fork’s Martin Cook and the Inspirations and several humorous books including “Disorder in the Court,” which is based on the stories of the late Sylva Solicitor Marcellus Buchanan.
Our third “B,” former First Baptist Pastor John Bunn, is another familiar name around town. In addition to his dozen or so years at the church, he has been mayor of Sylva and chairman of the town’s planning board. In addition to all those accomplishments, Bunn is also one of the authors who will be at Saturday’s book fair. His novel is a Western, “Shannon,” that chronicles the adventures of a 13-year-old boy who leaves his home in the Great Smoky Mountains to track down his parents’ killers.
Bunn said he’s always been a fan of Westerns.
“I grew up in the ‘cowboys-and-Indians’ age,” he said. “That’s the game boys played when I was young. That’s also when we’d lie on the floor and listen to ‘The Lone Ranger’ on the radio and go the movies on Saturday and watch the ‘shoot-’em-up’ Westerns. It’s been a part of my life for a long time.”
Our three “B’s” – and more than 50 other writers – will be available to sign and discuss their books this Saturday, Nov. 10, at First United Methodist Church. The books-and-authors event will begin at 9 a.m. and continue until 3 p.m., with 20 percent of the day’s sales going directly to the Jackson County Library building fund.
For the first time this year, book fair visitors will need to purchase tickets for the fair itself. The cost will be $5, with all children who are accompanied by an adult admitted for free. The admission charge has been added to generate more money for the library fund, and 100 percent of admission receipts will go into the building fund.
Tickets will be available at the door or in advance at City Lights and the Friends of the Library Bookstore. For more information about the Nov. 9 performance and Nov. 10 book fair, or to purchase tickets, call City Lights at 586-9499. Information is also available online at www.gsmbookfair.org.
|
