News

By Eliza Souers

The Lee University 2021-2022 Writer’s Series will welcome Jill McCorkle, novelist and short story writer, on Thursday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. The event, hosted by Lee’s Department of Language and Literature, will take place in the Rose Lecture Hall, located in the Helen DeVos College of Education on Lee’s campus.

“We are so glad that Jill McCorkle is coming to Lee to share with us her love of the written word and Southern culture,” said Dr. Donna Summerlin, chair of the Department of Language and Literature.

McCorkle will read from her newest novel, “Hieroglyphics.” Released in 2020, it is about uncovering past mysteries and secrets, intentions and dreams, and the legacies families leave. It has received praise from The New York Times, People Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai, and numerous other critical reviews and authors.

At 6 p.m., prior to the reading, the finalists of the Spark Writing Contest will read their creative works, and the award winner will be announced. The Spark Award was created by Lee and is open to writers in 8th-12th grade within 40 miles of the university.

“The Department of Language and Literature has created the Spark Award in order to support and uplift young emerging writers and acknowledge the vast talent that we have around us in Cleveland and surrounding areas,” said Lindsay Adams Kennedy, visiting lecturer in English and creative writing at Lee. “We hope that through this we can validate the hard work of these young writers, so that they continue to use and show the writing gifts that they have.”

There will be a Q&A session and a book signing following the reading.

Noted as “a born novelist,” McCorkle has published seven novels and four collections of short stories. Her first two novels, “The Cheer Leader” and “July 7th,” were published simultaneously in 1984, right after she graduated college. She has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her novel “Life After Life” was a New York Times bestseller, and she has published several New York Times Notable Books.

McCorkle is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and teaches at North Carolina State University, where she is affiliated with the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program. She was previously a Briggs-Copeland lecturer in fiction at Harvard and the chair of the Department of Creative Writing there. McCorkle received her MFA from Hollins University (previously Hollins College) and her Bachelor of Arts from North Carolina State University.

The event is non-ticketed, free, and open to the public.

For more information about McCorkle, visit https://www.jillmccorkle.com/.

For more information on the Writer’s Series, email Dr. William Woolfitt.