Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408110009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Blue Ridge Writers Conference will be Sept. 23 and 24 at Roanoke College in Salem. Writer Sharyn McCrumb will deliver this year's opening address. McCrumb is the author of ``Lovely in Her Bones,'' which received the Best Appalachian Novel Award, and ``If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O'' and ``The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter,'' both named New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
McCrumb also will lead fiction workshops.
Peter Svenson, author of ``Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground,'' will lead non-fiction workshops. His book was named a 1993 National Book Award Finalist.
Leading poetry critiques will be Katherine Soniat, assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech. Her most recent poetry collection, ``A Shared Life,'' won the Edwin Ford Piper Award from the University of Iowa Press. She also received the Camden Poetry Prize given by the Walt Whitman Center for the Arts and Humanities for her first collection, ``Notes of Departure.''
Amanda Cockrell and Pamela Lappies will discuss writing, editing and publishing the series novel. Cockrell is the director of the Hollins College graduate program in children's literature and has written 16 series novels. As editorial director at Book Creations, Inc., Lappies oversees all aspects of the company's 10 series and works with authors to develop new projects.
Delivering the keynote poetry reading will be Charles Wright, who is the author of 10 book-length collections, six chapbooks, three pamphlets, four translations and one non-fiction work. Wright received the 1993 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and has garnered a major award or honor nearly every year for the past two decades. He is the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
The registration fee for the conference is $10 for the Friday evening address and reception and $50, or $25 for full-time students, for all day Saturday. For more information, call 375-2207.
Marriage enrichment conference Sept. 30
A Marriage Enrichment Conference open to married or engaged couples with stable relationships will be held on Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at Holiday Inn-Tanglewood in Roanoke.
``Marriage: Peaks and Valleys'' will include six workshops to help couples learn new ways of communication and encourage commitment to permanent relationships. Among the leaders will by Bobbye and Britton Wood of Fort Worth, Texas, national president couple of the sponsoring Association for Couples in Marriage Enrichment.
Other workshops will cover financial planning, sexuality and coping with illness and death.
The registration deadline is Sept. 4. For more information, call Lynne or Dan Lonnquist at 929-4372.
Hollins teacher wins music awards
Michael Sitton, assistant professor of music at Hollins College, recently received two awards for his work. The French Piano Institute in Paris honored Sitton with an opportunity to perform at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8. He was chosen after participating in the Institute's summer program in Paris.
In addition, Sitton is the recipient of a 1994-95 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Award.
Sitton, who performs regularly in the region, will give a free recital at Hollins College on Sept. 19 at 8:15 p.m. in Talmadge Recital Hall
by CNB