March 19^th is Byron Herbert Reece Day in Georgia

The Georgia Senate has declared Friday, March 19 to be Byron Herbert Reece Day in honor of the state’s  Appalachian Poet/Novelist whose work celebrated the heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains, yet is practically unknown outside the region.
 
“The Appalachian Studies Association’s annual conference is the ideal and fitting event to honor the literary master and Georgia son,” said the Senate Resolution 832.
 
The conference, hosted by North Georgia College & State University, will feature a reception sponsored by Young Harris College and the Byron Herbert Reece Society as well as a panel and interactive musical session.  A clip from Voices: Finding Byron Herbert Reece, a DVD produced by the Society, will also be shown at the Friday night banquet.
 

Panel.   A Strong and Lonely Voice:  Celebrating Byron Herbert Reece includes poets, novelists, and Reece scholars, Coleman Barks, Phillip Lee Williams, Jim Clark, Hugh Ruppersburg, Tyrie Smith, Alan Jackson and Elizabeth Jordan.
 

The panel explains that Reece’s four books of poems and two novels, all published between the mid 1940s and the mid 1950s, comprise a richly detailed narrative of an Appalachian farming community confronting the modern world as seen through the penetrating eyes of an intimate stranger, said the panel.

“Widely praised during his lifetime, Reece is today barely known outside his region, though his small readership remains fiercely devoted.  An accurate reckoning of his career and his place in American literary history is overdue.  We hope this session will serve as a catalyst to that reckoning, and provide both a critical and scholarly overview and a creative celebration of this fascinating, talented, and unjustly neglected poet and novelist of the North Georgia Mountains,” the scholars write.
 

Interactive Session.   The Service of Song: Musical Settings of Byron Herbert Reece’s Poems features Jim Clark and Elizabeth Jordan’s performance of selected poems.
 
Georgia Appalachian Studies Center partners with the Byron Herbert Reece Society  as part of its mission to "live and learn the Appalachian story," says Alice Sampson, president of the Appalachian Studies Association and Director of the Center. Through a Grassroots Arts Program grant, administered by the Center, the Byron Herbert Reece Society will distribute the DVD and accompanying 8th grade lesson plans to libraries, middle schools, and home school associations in the state's 33 Appalachian Studies Center.