{"id":9178,"date":"2011-12-01T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=9178"},"modified":"2011-12-01T03:50:06","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T09:50:06","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-fiction-writer-kitterman-to-read-from-new-book-on-december-7th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2011\/12\/01\/austin-peay-state-university-fiction-writer-kitterman-to-read-from-new-book-on-december-7th\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University fiction writer Kitterman to read from new book on December 7th"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Barry Kitterman, an Austin Peay State University creative writing professor, had what might be called a typical, Midwestern upbringing. He grew up in the small town of Ivanhoe, populated by farmers and situated hundreds of miles from anything resembling a large city.<\/p>\n

But this Midwestern childhood actually occurred not too far from the Pacific Ocean, in northern California, causing a few people to scratch their heads when Kitterman tells them about his past.<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/a>

Barry Kitterman to read from his latest book December 7th at the Austin Peay Music\/Mass Communication Building\u2019s Concert Hall.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen I would tell people I was from California, they had a certain set of assumptions as to what that meant,\u201d Kitterman said. \u201cIt was so far removed from my real experience that I thought I wanted to write stories about the California I grew up in, which is rural, agricultural, a long way from the ocean and, something I realized much later, very poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitterman did write those stories over the last 30 years, and in May, they were published by Southern Methodist University Press as the short story collection, \u201cFrom the San Joaquin.\u201d The title refers to the region in California where the town of Ivanhoe is located.<\/p>\n

At 8:00pm on December 7th, Kitterman will give a reading from his new book in the Music\/Mass Communication Building\u2019s Concert Hall on the APSU campus. The event, which is sponsored by the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is free and open to the public.<\/p>\n

The stories are, according to Kitterman, \u201cstraight up realism,\u201d and the writing hints at some of his literary influences, including Sherwood Anderson, Louise Erdrich and Ernest Hemingway. Al Young, California\u2019s poet laureate emeritus, even likened the APSU professor to John Steinbeck.<\/p>\n

\u201cKitterman\u2019s fiction gets at the gut and soul of a scuffling, blue-collar farming, lumbering, trucking tottering California,\u201d Young said. \u201cA heart-stirring collection of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Gay, the best-selling author of \u201cProvinces of Night,\u201d described the stories as \u201cdeeply human\u201d and \u201ctouched with grace and compassion and a strong sense of place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are sturdy, no-nonsense, character-driven stories that make turning the pages a necessity as well as a pleasure,\u201d Steve Yarbrough, author of \u201cSafe from the Neighbors,\u201d said. \u201cKitterman\u2019s book is superb.\u201d<\/p>\n

In September, Kitterman traveled to Washington, D.C., for a special celebration honoring the newly established Peace Corps Writers Collection at the Library of Congress. The collection was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps and to honor the numerous writers who served as volunteers over the years.<\/p>\n

Kitterman joined the Peace Corps in the late 1970s and worked as a volunteer in Belize. He memorably depicted some of his Peace Corps experiences in the 2008 novel, \u201cThe Baker’s Boy.\u201d The book tells two intertwined stories of Tanner Johnson. The first deals with him as a middle-aged man, so haunted by his past that he flees from his pregnant wife and the stable life he knew. That past informs the second story in the book, which focuses on Johnson’s traumatic struggles and disillusionment 25 years earlier while serving with the Peace Corps in Belize.<\/p>\n

The work struck a cord with many of his fellow-returned Peace Corps volunteers, and in 2009, it was awarded the Maria Thomas Fiction Award by the website, www.peacecorpswriters.org<\/a>. The award, named after the late novelist and Peace Corps volunteer Maria Thomas, is given annually to a work of high literary merit. Previous winners include best-selling authors Paul Theroux and Kent Haruf.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reading Barry Kitterman, I find myself rediscovering the pleasures of reading Dostoyevsky \u2014 admittedly an extravagant claim in response to a first novel,\u201d Ann Neelon, a poet and Murray State University professor wrote in a review of the book for the website. \u201cLike \u2018Crime and Punishment,\u2019 \u2018The Brothers Karamazov,\u2019 \u2018The Idiot\u2019 and\/or \u2018The Possessed,\u2019 \u2018The Baker’s Boy\u2019 constitutes a powerful work of moral imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

A book signing will follow the December 7th reading. For more information, contact Susan Wallace, with the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, at wallacess@apsu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Barry Kitterman, an Austin Peay State University creative writing professor, had what might be called a typical, Midwestern upbringing. He grew up in the small town of Ivanhoe, populated by farmers and situated hundreds of miles from anything resembling a large city. But this Midwestern childhood actually occurred not too far from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[10265,23,589,4025,262,2018,7995,11930,11929,2873,11927,11928,1363,4118,2279,1367],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-2o2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9180,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9178\/revisions\/9180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}