Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope

The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts will host a book talk celebration on the publication of Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope at Pebble Hill on January 11 at 4:00 p.m.

Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope examines and celebrates the work of southern writer Lewis “Buddy” Nordan. Written by scholars and fiction writers who represent a fascinating range of experience—from a Shakespearean scholar to a former student of Nordan’s—this is a rich array of essays, poems, and visual arts in tribute to this important writer. The collection deepens the base of scholarship on Nordan and contextualizes his work in relation to other important southern writers such as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.

Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope is edited by Dr. Barbara Baker, director of the College of Liberal Arts Women’s Leadership Institute and author of The Blues Aesthetic and the Making of American Identity in the Literature of the South. Her most recent publication is an edited collection of essays on Albert Murray, entitled Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation.

The program will feature Baker and several contributors and will be followed by a reception. The public is invited. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope is published jointly by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities and The University of AlabamaPress.

Lewis Nordan was born and raised in Mississippi before moving to Alabama to pursue his Ph.D. at Auburn University. He taught for several years at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and retired from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a professor of English. Nordan has written four novels, three collections of short stories and a memoir entitled Boy with Loaded Gun. His second novel, Wolf Whistle, won the Southern Book Award, and his subsequent novel, The Sharpshooter Blues, won the Notable Book Award from the American Library Association and the Fiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Nordan is renowned for his distinctive comic writing style, even while addressing serious personal and cultural issues such as heartbreak, loss, violence, and racism. He transforms tragic characters and events into moments of artistic transcendence, illuminating what he calls the “history of all human beings.”

For more information, please call 334-844-4946 or visit our website at www.auburn.edu/cah.