 |
| Professor Elliot Engel |
Literary lecturer Dr. Elliot Engel will inaugurate an eclectic new series
of lectures and performances for 2018 as the Friends of the Library Sunset
Signature Series gets underway.
The series,
which will take place in downtown Asheboro’s historic Sunset Theatre, is
sponsored by the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau, the City of Asheboro
and the Friends of the Randolph County Public Library.
Engel will
appear at 7 p.m. Tuesday, January 23, with a lively talk, “Our Slippery
Mother Tongue: A Light History of English.” His appearance is free and the
public is invited.
Using
anecdotes, analysis and large doses of humor, Engel will bring to life the
fascinating development of the English language from the Anglo-Saxons to the
invading French, and beyond.
Engel has
delivered his highly entertaining but historically detailed talks worldwide
over his 30-year career. He is author of 10 books; his lecture series about
Charles Dickens appeared on PBS stations around the country. Four of plays he
has written have been produced in the past 10 years.
In 2009, he
was inducted into the Royal Society of Arts in England for his academic work
and his promotion of Dickens. Sales of his CDs and DVDs have raised funds for
the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, which Dickens helped
found in 1852.
Engel lives
in Raleigh and has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University
and Duke University. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA , where he won the Outstanding
Teaching Award.
Installments
of the series following Engel will take place in March, May and September:
- Asheville busker and radio personality Abby the Spoon Lady will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 17. She will be accompanied by Chris Rodrigues, another Asheville street performer who is a one-man band. Abby developed her talent while hitchhiking and hopping freight trains through 48 states. She’s a mainstay on the streets of Asheville and a radio personality who performs around the country, sharing her music and telling stories about her experiences.
- Asheboro native Holly George-Warren will take the stage at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 3. One of the country’s foremost music journalists, George-Warren is most recently penned the biographies A Man Called Destruction: The Life of Alex Chilton, from Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man, and Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry. She is currently working on a biography of Janis Joplin. Her husband, author and musician Robert Burke Warren, will play music as a soundtrack for her talk.
- Journalist Kevin Maurer, who has been embedded with various U.S. military forces since the beginning of the war in Iraq, will appear at 7 p.m. Thursday, September 13. He is author of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden, which was the top-selling hardcover book of 2012
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment