The plot thickens at the 2014 UNC Charlotte’s literary festival, as words, music and art combine to tell a compelling narrative.
The free community festival at UNC Charlotte Center City, 320 E. 9th Street, will feature activities for adults on Friday October 17 and for families on Saturday October 18.
“There is no other festival that I can think of that combines music and literature the way this one will,” said Mark West, organizer of the festival and chair of the English Department at UNC Charlotte. “Not just music for music’s sake, but the connection between words and notes.”
“It’s a literary festival, but all of the arts are folding into this,” West said. “Because, there are so many different ways that you can tell a story, and I don’t think we’ve missed a thing.”
Students and faculty from an array of UNC Charlotte departments are volunteering their time and talent at the festival. Freshmen in the English learning community will coordinate the crafts section on Saturday. The Children’s Literature Graduate Organization also will take part.
“This year, we are reinstating the “Make Your Own Book” table,” said Jennifer Vogt, a leader with the organization. “CLGO hosted this table last year, and it was so successful, we decided to bring it back again this year. At the table, visitors will be provided with a blank mini book and access to markers and crayons so that they can author and illustrate their own picture book. We will also have mini books with blank panels inside for visitors who wish to make their own comic books.”
Several readings will be paired with music. Author James A. Grymes, author of “Violins of Hope,” will tell the story of the Israeli violinmaker who restored these inspirational instruments that were lost or taken during the Holocaust. While Grymes reads an excerpt from his book, UNC Charlotte violin student Idunn Lohne will play Yiddish folk songs that people hope in the dark days of the Holocaust.
In another fusing of art and literature, UNC Charlotte theatre students on Saturday will join Beth Murray, assistant professor of theatre education, as she performs a theatrical adaptation of children’s picture books.
“Literature becomes literature when the reader and writer work together,” West said. “We’re trying to engage with stories and the whole reading and literary process.”
The festival allows the university community, especially the English Department and students, an opportunity interact with lovers of reading, Vogt said.
”For the members of CLGO, we look at it as a unique opportunity to share not only our knowledge of and passion for children’s literature, which includes everything from picture books to young adult novels, but also our love of reading in general,” she said.
Details of the Days
Artists, musicians, authors and performers will enliven the second annual Center City Literary Festival on October 17 and 18 at UNC Charlotte Center City. UNC Charlotte Center City and the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences are sponsoring the free event.
The adult-focused part of the festival will take place on Friday, Oct. 17 from 6 to 9 p.m. In addition to the reading by Grymes, poet Christopher Davis, mystery novelist Mark de Castrique, essayist Sandra Govan, and poet Grace Ocasio will read. Several of the participants are contributors to the just released book, 27 Views of Charlotte: The Queen City in Prose and Poetry, and these participants will read from their contributions to this collection.
Throughout the evening, the folk music group the Kollard Kings will perform. The Kollard Kings specialize in old-time string band songs from Charlotte’s surprising heyday as a country music recording center back in the 1930s, the roots of what would become “bluegrass.” Banjo picker Tom Estes is past president of Charlotte Folk Society and an authority on Southern music traditions. Fiddlin’ Tom Hanchett is staff historian at Levine Museum of the New South.
The evening will close with a book signing.
The children-oriented part of the festival will take place on Saturday, Oct.18 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The festival will feature literature, art, theatre, and music and will provide children with hands-on activities. In addition to the performances coordinated by Murray, featured authors and illustrators will include Caldecott Medal winner Gail Haley, illustrator Mathew Myers, and digital artist Heather Freeman. Many of the art-related activities will relate to the opening of an art exhibit titled “Icarus: A Study of the Urge to Fly.”
The festival will conclude with a family-friendly musical performance by UNC Charlotte’s Chamber Orchestra, focused on the intersections of literature and music, to include:
- Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (a contemporary of Mozart’s widely recognized as the first classical composer of African ancestry), Overture to “ L’amant anonyme” (The Anonymous Suitor). The overture was written for an opera based on a play by Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, about a widower who is courted anonymously in writing by her bashful best friend.
- Jean Sibelius, Kuolema (Death). Incidental music to a play of the same name by Sibelius’s brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt. The play is a meditation on the cycle of life and death.
- Dmitry Kabalevsky, The Comedians, originally intended as incidental music for a children’s play by the Soviet Jewish writer Mark Daniel titled The Inventor and the Comedians, about Johannes Gutenberg and a band of itinerant buffoons. At the Center City Literary Festival, the work will be set to a new narration of the Russian fairy tale “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship” by distinguished writer and conductor Jonathan Andrew Govias.
Parking for both days of the event is available in nearby lots for a fee. UNC Charlotte Center City is located at 320 E. Ninth Street, Charlotte.
Words: Seth Allen, Communications Intern; and Mark West, Chair of the English Department
Image from 2013 festival by Fodee Wiles. More images.
