CF to Host an Evening with Author Fred Chappell

Oct. 10, 2011

The College of Central Florida will present the eighth annual Debra Vazquez Memorial Poetry Series in November with featured author Fred Chappell.

The reading is on Thursday, Nov. 3, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Ewers Century Center at the CF Ocala Campus, 3001 S.W. College Road. There is no cost to attend and a book signing will follow.

Chappell is the author of 30 volumes of poetry, fiction and literary criticism. His most recent works include “Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories,” 2009, and “Shadow Box,” 2009. His books of poetry include “Spring Garden: New and Selected Poems,” 1995, and “Backsass,” 2004.

He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Bollingen Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger from the Academie Française for best foreign book. A founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Chappell retired after 40 years from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where his students included other celebrated writers such as Reynolds Price and Anne Tyler.

Frank Levering wrote in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, “Not since James Agee and Robert Penn Warren has a Southern writer displayed such masterful versatility. Together with only a handful of his American contemporaries, Chappell reminds us of the almost forgotten phrase ‘man of letters.’”

Writing for the Chicago Tribune, David Slavitt said, “Chappell should be our generation’s Robert Frost, whom he in some ways resembles and in many ways surpasses.”     

The Debra Vazquez Memorial Poetry Series honors the memory of poet and professor Debra Vazquez by bringing renowned authors to the College of Central Florida. For more information, contact Professor Wendy Adams at adamsw@cf.edu or 352-854-2322, ext. 1546.