Award-winning North Carolina author David Joy will visit Concord next month as the featured guest for a literary tradition that has brought authors and readers together for more than two decades.
The Concord Friends of the Library will host its annual Deana Irvin Symposium on Thursday, Oct. 8, at Cabarrus Country Club, 3247 Weddington Road in Concord.
Joy will take part in a moderated conversation with David Kern, co-owner of Goldberry Books and a prominent literary podcaster. Doors will open at 11:30 a.m., with lunch served at noon.
A 12th-generation North Carolinian, Joy is the author of five novels and has built a nationally recognized body of work deeply rooted in Appalachia and the people and places of western North Carolina.
The New York Times described Joy as “a man who sees his homeplace clearly and who writes like his hand was touched by God.”
His most recent novel, Those We Thought We Knew, won the 2023 Willie Morris Award and 2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize. His other novels include When These Mountains Burn, winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award; The Line That Held Us, winner of the 2018 Southern Book Prize; The Weight of This World; and Where All Light Tends to Go, which was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Where All Light Tends to Go was also adapted into the 2023 film Devil’s Peak, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Robin Wright.
Joy grew up in North Carolina’s Piedmont along the Catawba River before moving at age 18 to the mountains of Jackson County, where he has lived for more than two decades. His work has been translated into six languages, and his stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in publications including Garden & Gun, The New York Times Magazine and TIME.
He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey and co-editor of Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing, a project he spearheaded to raise money for C.A.S.T. for Kids, a public charity that provides children with special needs and other disadvantages opportunities to enjoy a day of fishing with volunteers.
Joy lives in Tuckasegee with his dog, Edie Munster.
Tickets are $35 per person, with electronic payment preferred. Reservations are requested by Sept. 24 and can be made by scanning the QR code included on the event flyer.
A Concord literary tradition
The symposium traces its roots to the late 1990s, when members of several Concord-area book clubs, including the Annie Allison and Esoteric clubs, began discussing the idea of bringing a published author to the community for a meal and conversation.
The goal was to provide what organizers described as a “gift of literacy” to the Concord community.
Deana Irvin became the driving force behind turning that idea into reality. Following Irvin’s death in 2001, the Concord Friends of the Library named the symposium in her memory.
The Concord Friends of the Library itself dates to 1974 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting literacy and supporting the Concord branch of the Cabarrus County Public Library.
Contributions to the organization help support a variety of library programs and activities, including appearances by local authors, scavenger hunts and escape rooms, staff appreciation efforts, the Friends’ annual meeting and subscriptions to BookPage magazine.
For more information visit, concordfriendsofthelibrary.com.