Visiting Authors

The NGCSU Visiting Authors Program works to bring to campus contemporary writers who can discuss their literary work with our students and community, offering illuminating perspectives on human experience--revealed through their poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, as well as insights about the writing and publishing process.  

Our Fall 2007 Visiting Author is Mr. Jackie Cooper, author of Journey of a Gentle Southern Man, Chances and Choices, and Halfway Home.  His latest book, a collection of personal sketches entitled The Bookbinder, was published by Mercer Press in 2006.  Mr. Cooper is also host of a weekly Georgia Public Radio program called “Fridays with Jackie.” 

Fall 2001                Amy Blackmarr, memoirist: Going to Ground (1997), Above the Fall Line (2003)

Spring 2002           Lynn Hinton, novelist    Friendship Cake (2001)

Fall 2002                Judith Ortiz Cofer, poet, essayist, and fiction writer      Terms of Survival (1987),Silent Dancing (1991), The Latin Deli: Telling the lives of Barrio Women (1993),

                                 Reaching for the Mainland (1995),  Woman in Front of the Sun (2000)

Spring 2003          Janisse Ray, creative nonfiction writer            Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (2000)

Fall 2003               Lorraine Lopez, fiction writer                          Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (2002)                                And

                             John Stone, poet                                            Where Water Begins (1998)

Spring 2004          Natasha Trethewey, poet                              Domestic Work (2000), Belocq’s Ophelia (2002

Fall 2004               Linda G. Niemann, memoirist                         Boomer: A Railroad Journey (1992), Railroad Voices (1998)

Spring 2005

 Fall 2005              Terry Kay, novelist                                          To Dance with the White Dog (1991), The Valley of Light (2003)

Spring 2006          Margaret Edson, playwright                             Wit (1999)

Fall 2006               Brian Corrigan, novelist                                   The Poet of Loch Ness (2005)

Spring 2007             In conjunction with the 2007 Dahlonega Literary Festival:

Diane Gabaldon, novelist                               Outlander (1992)

Cassandra King, novelist                               The Same, Sweet Girls (2006)

Mary Kay Andrews, novelist                           Little Bitty Lies (2004)    

      For additional information, please contact:

Dr. Donna Gessell, chair
302 Downtown Office Building
PH:  706-864-1528
dgessell@northgeorgia.edu