Your Library is hosting local poet Catherine Pritchard Childress for a talk on Saturday, Aug. 19. Childress will speak in the Library’s Jones Meeting Center at 2 p.m.
Pritchard Childress will read from and talk about her newest book of poetry, Outside the Frame, which was published in April 2023.
Pritchard Childress uses persona poetry to tell the stories of people who have historically been ignored or silenced. Persona poetry is a style of poetry in which the poet writes from an imagined character’s perspective, to illuminate both individual experience and larger universal truths. Pritchard Childress’ characters range from biblical figures to modern Appalachian women.
EastOver Press describes Pritchard Childress’ new collection as “seeking to subvert tradition in the pursuit of truth.”
“These poems move seamlessly between worlds—the biblical and the contemporary, the mythical and the uncomfortably real. The speakers here reflect not the poet but any woman, all women, from Lot’s wife to housewife—unnamed, unheard, yet unrelenting.”
Library Assistant Zachary Harris says, “Catherine Pritchard Childress uses her voice as an Appalachian author to highlight the perspectives of those who have been historically silenced, particularly women. But her work will resonate with any person who has experienced cultural marginalization.”
Pritchard Childress lives in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, where she teaches writing and literature at Lees-McRae College. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Other, published in 2015, and Outside the Frame.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, Still: The Journal, The Cape Rock, Town Creek Poetry, drafthorse, Stoneboat, Kaimana and Kudzu Literary Magazine. Her poetry has been anthologized in Southern Poetry Anthology Volume VI: Tennessee, Volume VII: North Carolina and Women Speak Volumes VII and VIII.
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