On the Same Plate

The culmination of Ashe County's Literary Festival is the On the same Plate luncheon.  Each guest was served a tasty lunch of quiche, salad, fruit and a wonderful piece of apple cake.  Four of the festival's authors, and one moderator, held a discussion regarding the role of family in their writing.

Georgann Eubanks spoke about the stories her 90 year old mother tells her.  Her recollection usually doesn't match with her mom's recollection of events, but that doesn't make the story any less true.

Wayne Caldwell wrote Cataloochee,  which takes place in the mountains of North Carolina following the Civil War.  It wasn't until he was older that he found out his roots were in Cataloochee .  He has gotten to know his ancestors through his research and fictional writings.


Darnell Arnoult grew up in a family of women, her grandmother, great-aunt, her mom and herself.  Her mom had some mental health issues that clouded her childhood.  Although she writes fiction, many of her stories deal with mental health problems and writing has helped her to understand and accept her mother's illness.


Mark DeCastrique is a mystery writer and he explained how important "voice" is to writing, especially mystery books.  Writing from the first person lets the reader learn clues and details along with the main character.  Third person writing is great for thrillers as the reader knows who the protagonist is, while the characters in the book do not.

Mark DeCastrique, Wayne Caldwell, Ken Burrows, Darnell Arnoult, Georgann Eubanks

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with these five wonderful authors.  They were insightful, witty and a lot of fun.  They talked about some personal issues using humor and candor.  I won a door prize of a yellow mum plant that is sitting proudly in my living room.  I can not wait for next year's On The Same Plate Luncheon.

Community Read 2011

This is the fourth year of the Ashe County's Literary Festival, On the Same Page.  The theme this year is Family Matters.  The kick-off was the month-long community read Night by Elie Wiesel.  Night is the story of the author's year long internment in a Nazi concentration camp during the last year of World War II.  After being freed, Wiesel struggles with his guilt of letting his father die alone and with his loss of faith.

There was a book discussion at the library led by Rosemary Horowitz, a Judaic scholar at ASU.  After the war, Wiesel wrote a book about his time in captivity.  It was 800 pages long and written in Yiddish.  He later translated the book into French and then English, and it became only 120 pages long.  There has been much controversy about what was left out of the translations, and why.

What I can't figure out is why they chose this particular book as the Community Read.  It was not written by a North Carolina author and it has nothing to do with North Carolina at all.  As for family, Wiesel did stay with his father while he was held by the Nazi's, but abandoned him at the end for fear of being beaten for helping him.  His mother and younger sister never got out alive, but his two older sisters did.  They are briefly mentioned in the book.  Before the war, his father spent little time with his family as he was a Biblical scholar and his life revolved around his studies.

I hope next year they chose something a little more uplifting and easy to read.  Concentration camp memories do not lead fun conversation or lively discussions.