Award-winning author Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels and books about NASCAR, will speak at Dalton State College on Tuesday.
McCrumb has earned several honors, including the Wilma Dykeman Award for Regional Historical Literature, the Chaffin Award for Achievement in Southern Literature and the Appalachian Writers Association Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award. Several of her novels have spent weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list.
McCrumb likens her ballad novels, which include “She Walks These Hills” and “The Rosewood Casket,” to Appalachian quilts. “I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life and local tragedy, and I piece them together into a complex whole that tells not only a story but also a deeper truth about the culture of the mountain South,” she said.
McCrumb’s NASCAR novels include “St. Dale” and “Once Around the Track.” “St. Dale,” modeled loosely after Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece, “The Canterbury Tales,” tells the story of a group of ordinary people who go on a pilgrimage in honor of racing legend Dale Earnhardt and discover a miracle in the process.
“St. Dale” won the 2006 Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association and received the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award. “Once Around the Track” was nominated for the Weatherford Award.
Her presentation will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Goodroe Auditorium of Memorial Hall on the Dalton, Ga., campus (take I-75 Exit 333). Admission is free. For more information, call 706-272-4469.