Thursday, March 4, 2004

CONTACT: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu

WRITER AMY BLACKMARR TO GIVE READING, SIGN HER WORKS ON UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA CAMPUS ON MARCH 16

ATHENS, Ga. – Georgia author and essayist Amy Blackmarr will read from her third and newest book, Above the Fall Line: The Trail from White Pine Cabin on Tuesday, March 16, in Park Hall on the University of Georgia campus. The event, open free to the public, will be at 4:30 p.m. in room 265 of Park Hall.

Blackmarr is also the author of the critically acclaimed books Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond, and House of Steps: Finding the Path Home.

“We are honored and delighted to have Amy Blackmarr with us on campus,” said Philip Lee Williams, adjunct professor of creative writing. “She is a remarkable personal essayist, who uses nature as the central idea in her marvelous and deeply personal writings.”

Blackmarr will speak to Williams’s class on nature writing during her visit on campus.

“All my writing is really a working through,” said Blackmarr, “of processing, looking for, and discovering connections, which is where my survival lies. If I can unearth unifying patterns of connection, I can get through. I can find, as Above the Fall Line puts it, solid ground.”

A south Georgia native who lived in the Midwest for 20 years, Blackmarr is best known for her nature essays set in the rustic houses she has lived in. Her essays have been broadcast on Georgia Gazette, Georgia Public Radio’s weekly features show, as well as Up to Date, a weekly news show on Kansas City’s NPR affiliate. She was a Madison Self Fellow at the University of Kansas where she completed her Ph.D. in English, and she presently lives in the north Georgia mountains.

Her latest work earned Blackmarr a nomination for Georgia Author of the Year honors as well as for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment.

Published in 2003 by Mercer University Press, Above the Fall Line, in tandem with Blackmarr’s earlier books creates an insightful, readable and deeply moving trilogy. She tests herself in numerous habitats in order to explore life and her original relationships within and to it. Going to Ground and House of Steps were originally published by Viking Press and republished by Mercer in new editions in 2003.

For information, contact Philip Lee Williams at 542-8501.