Bookmark's 1999 season

The University of Alabama Center for Public TV & Radio

Featured Authors, 1999

June 3: Host Don Noble talks with one of the nation’s premier novelists, Pat Conroy, author of THE WATER IS WIDE, THE GREAT SANTINI, THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE, THE PRINCE OF TIDES, and BEACH MUSIC. Conroy explains how his troubled relationship with his father figures into his fiction; how he writes about nature so effectively; and why he spends so much time with food in his books.

June 10: Don Noble continues his conversation with Pat Conroy, a Southerner who has become one of the nation’s preeminent novelists. Noble also speaks with Sandra Conroy, who has written and taught extensively in Alabama, about her novel, MAKING WAVES IN ZION.

June 17: Birmingham mystery writer Anne George talks about the charming and engaging sisters who star in her books which are set in Vulcan’s shadow: MURDER RUNS IN THE FAMILY, MURDER ON A BAD HAIR DAY, MURDER ON A GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT, and MURDER GETS A LIFE. This interview was recorded live before an audience at the Alabama Writers’ Forum annual meeting in Montgomery.

June 24: Even though he spent much of his life in New England, that hasn’t kept Fred Bonnie from being a successful Southern writer. He tells host Don Noble why he writes about this region and discusses his new book of short stories, DETECTING METAL.

July 1: Host Don Noble talks with Phyllis Perry, a native of Tuskegee, Ala., about her novel STIGMATA. It’s the story of Lizzie, a young African American girl, who inherits her grandmother's trunk and handmade quilt and finds physical and psychological pain bound up in those gifts.

July 8: As writer in residence at the Mobile Press, Roy Hoffman has published long, thoughtful pieces on slave descendants, harbor pilots, Gulf coast crackpots, and community heroes. He also talks with Don Noble about his novel, ALMOST FAMILY, and about returning to Mobile after 20 years in New York.

July 15: Pre-empted for THUNDER IN HUNTSVILLE, a documentary about the part Alabama played in the moon landing 30 years ago.

July 22: Host Don Noble talks with Birmingham poet and author Charles Ghigna, who has published poetry and many books for children including RIDDLE RHYMES, GOOD CATS/BAD CATS, GOOD DOGS/BAD DOGS. His latest work, SEE THE YAK YAK, is a featured selection for the fall from the Book-of-the-Month Club.

July 29: Novelist and short story writer Nanci Kincaid talks about her most recent novel, BALLS, in which the central character, like Ms. Kincaid, is the wife of a college football coach.

Aug 5: A North Carolina writer who sets much of her fiction deep in the Appalachians, Lee Smith is the author of three collections of short stories and nine novels including ORAL HISTORY, FAIR AND TENDER LADIES, and SAVING GRACE. She is a former Lyndhurst Prize winner, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award Recipient, and winner of the Robert Penn Warren Prize.

Aug. 12: PRE-EMPTED

Aug. 19: Hal Crowther, columnist for the OXFORD AMERICAN, speaks with host Don Noble about magazine publishing, the South, and why everyone seems to hate the media.

Aug. 26: Jeanie Thompson, author of WITNESS, HOW TO ENTER THE RIVER, and LITANY FOR A VANISHING LANDSCAPE talks with Don Noble about her poetry and her work as executive director of The Alabama Writers' Forum.

Sept. 2: Madison Jones, of Auburn, Ala., talks about NASHVILLE 1864: THE DYING OF THE LIGHT, his powerful novel about a boy who witness the Confederacy’s twilight when he sets out to find his soldiering father and return him to the failing family farm. Jones is the recent recipient of the T.S. Elliot Award for Lifetime Achievement in Creative Writing and the Harper Lee Award, given annually to a distinguished Alabama writer by the Alabama Writers’ Forum.

Sept. 9: Host Don Noble visits once again with Lee Smith, the popular and prolific writer of novels and short stories set in Appalachia.

Sept. 16: Pulitzer prize winning journalist Rick Bragg talks about ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING, the moving and evocative memoir about his hardscrabble childhood in North Alabama with a troubled, alcoholic father and a loving but struggling mother. University of Alabama English professor Don Noble hosts this series.

Sept. 23: Acclaimed poet and fiction writer Margaret Walker Alexander grew up in Birmingham, and her novel JUBILEE has been called a black GONE WITH THE WIND. Shortly before her death last year she talked with host Don Noble about her long career and her association with the writer Richard Wright.

Sept. 30: Since creating Forrest Gump, the world’s most famous idiot savant, Winston Groom has been busy writing a sequel to that novel, GUMP & CO., and SHROUDS OF GLORY, a Civil War history. Groom also talks to host Don Noble about his earlier novels that are set in Mobile.

Oct. 10: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson are praised as gifted speakers, but they are only two of many fascinating African American orators. Host Don Noble talks with Robert Branham about his new book LIFT EVERY VOICE: AFRICAN AMERICAN ORATORY, 1787-1900.

Oct. 17: Novelist A. Manette Ansay talks with host Don Noble about the importance of the physical landscape in her novels, including RIVER ANGEL, where an angel may—or may not have—appeared to a struggling community.

Oct. 24: Host Don Noble speaks with John Barth, one of the nation’s most distinguished men of letters, about his preoccupation in his fiction with twins and Shahrazad, the enchanting storyteller from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

Oct. 31: Lee May, a journalist born in Mississippi, was at ground zero covering many of the major news events of the last 20 years. May talks with host Don Noble about his memoir of reconciliation with his father and his decision to quit writing front-page news.

Nov. 4 & Nov. 7: Madison Jones, of Auburn, Ala., talks about NASHVILLE 1864: THE DYING OF THE LIGHT, his powerful novel about a boy who witness the Confederacy’s twilight when he sets out to find his soldiering father and return him to the failing family farm. Jones is the recent recipient of the T.S. Elliot Award for Lifetime Achievement in Creative Writing and the Harper Lee Award, given annually to a distinguished Alabama writer by the Alabama Writers’ Forum.

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