Fiction Readings by Tony Earley and Randall Kenan

Fiction writers Tony Earley and Randall Kenan will read from their work at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14, in Gailor Auditorium. The readings, book signings and reception that will follow are free and open to the public.

 Earley is the author of a story collection, “Here We Are in Paradise,” which won him recognition from both Granta and the New Yorker as one of America’s best young fiction writers, and two novels, “Jim the Boy” and “The Blue Star.” He has also published a collection of personal essays, “Somehow Form a Family.” His stories have appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker (most recently “Jack and the Mad Dog”), Harper’s, Granta and Esquire. Earley held a Tennessee Williams Fellowship as Writer-in-Residence at Sewanee in 1997. He is the Samuel Milton Fleming Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. In the New York Times Book Review, Ellen Currie praised Earley for his “wonderful gift for deep observation, exact and wise and often funny.”

Kenan is the author of a novel, “A Visitation of Spirits,” and a collection of stories, “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a nominee for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction and a New York Times Notable Book. He has written a young adult biography, “James Baldwin: Author,” and two works of nonfiction, “Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century,” which was nominated for the Southern Book Award, and “The Fire This Time.” He is also the author of the text for Norman Mauskopf’s book of photographs, “A Time Not Here: The Mississippi Delta.” He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Author Terry McMillan said, “Randall Kenan is a genius; our black Márquez. He weaves myth, folktales, magic and reality like no one else I know, and he doesn’t miss a beat.”

This event is presented by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the department of English.