Susan Kelly will speak at Montreat library lunch

Novelist Susan S. Kelly will be the guest speaker at the annual luncheon of the Montreat College Friends of the Library luncheon on Saturday, June 4 in Gaither Fellowship Hall. Raised in Rutherfordton, Kelly graduated from the UNC Chapel Hill and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College.

Kelly is the author of five novels and is a contributing editor at Our State Magazine. Her novels include “How Close We Come,” “Even Now,” “The Last of Something,” “Now You Know” and “By Accident.” Her first novel, “How Close We Come” won the Carolina Novel Award in 1997 and was reissued nationally in 1998 by Warner Books. German and Russian rights were sold, and the book was an Alternate Selection in the Book-of-the-Month Club.

“Now You Know” is the story of two friends, Libba Charles and Frances Simpson, who met in 1947 as college roommates. Years later on her deathbed, Frances extracts a promise from her three daughters. When they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother's summer hideaway in Montreat, they go. None of them is prepared for what they will discover about their mother, about Libba, or about themselves in this poignant, skillful rendering of reunions and farewells.

The author has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and taught creative writing for the North Carolina Writers Network, UNC Greensboro, Salem College and the summer program at Woodberry Forest School She and her husband live in Greensboro.

The luncheon, at noon Saturday, June 4, is open to all. Reservations are required. Call the library at 669-8012, ext. 3504 or 3502.