Local author to hold 'Brown Bag and Books' reading at Black Mountain Center for the Arts

The Black Mountain Center for the Arts will welcome local author Nancy Poling from 12 - 1 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12, when she will present her latest book, "While Earth Still Speaks." 

The public is welcome to this free Brown Bag and Books presentation that invites you to bring a lunch and listen as the author reads from her book and answers questions after.

Poling retired to Black Mountain with her husband Jim. She expresses her activism and interests through writing. Her published works include the non-fiction book, "Before It Was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987);" a short story collection, "Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman;" and the novel, "Out of the Pumpkin Shell."

While Earth Still Speaks evolved from Poling asking of herself, then of her protagonist, “During this time of ecological crisis, how do I make my voice and my life count?”

In the book, which is focused in our region, the main character Elizabeth’s daughter, Angelica, has joined a cadre of eco-terrorists, and Mary (more crone that virgin) has abruptly ended her “Operation: Earth Rescue” visitations at Elizabeth’s North Carolina farm.

Now Elizabeth must discover her own calling, a passion worth risking her life for. It’s a journey into her own heart, and the adventure she embarks on is as unpredictable to her as it will be to the reader.

“Poling’s character descriptions of Elizabeth are so cinematic we see the changes, the turmoil, the parts of her that make her something of a misfit and sometimes comic saint,” said writer Ina Hughs. “The narrative makes a strong case for the complexities of family relationships and hard choices that are not so much between right and wrong, but wrong and less wrong, right and righter."

In addition to the books she has written, Poling is the winner of the 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize competition for “Leander’s Lies.”

She received a monetary award from the North Carolina Literary Review and her winning essay will be published in this year’s North Carolina Literary Review.

Join the author for this exchange of ideas. The Black Mountain Center for the Arts is located at 225 W. State Street. For more information call 669-0930 or visit BlackMountainArts.org