North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer
Shares Her Latest Poetic Offering
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, September 28, at 9:30 PM

Kathryn Stripling Byer's five published books of poetry have won numerous awards including the Lamont Poetry Selection for Wildwood Flower, The Roanoke-Chowan and Brockman Campbell prizes for Black Shawl, and the Southern Independent Booksellers Association Award for Catching Light.  Byer’s new poetry collection, entitled Coming to Rest, is considered a re-articulation and a culmination of her distinguished career, which includes her present position as a North Carolina Poet Laureate.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, September 28, at 9:30 PM, the lauded local poet shares her latest works and how they reflect on remembered seasons of personal time that are said to bring words alive within those distances of nature, time and meaning out of which poetry originally was born.

Kathryn Stripling Byer grew up in southwest Georgia, graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she studied with Allen Tate, Fred Chappell, and Robert Watson. Her books of poetry include Catching Light (Louisiana State University Press, 2002); Black Shawl (1998); Wildwood Flower (1992), which was the 1992 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986), which was published in the Associated Writing Programs award series.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with Kathryn Stripling Byer on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, September 21, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, September 23, at 5 PM.

During the 20-week, 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: J. Peder Zane (The Top Ten), Gov. Michael Easley (Look Out, College, Here I Come!), Michele Bowen (Holy Ghost Corner), Neal Thompson (Driving With the Devil), Joseph Bathanti (Coventry), Joanna Catherine Scott (The Road From Chapel Hill), James Dodson (Beautiful Madness), Dan Heath (Made To Stick), Margaret Maron (Hard Row), James Peacock (Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World), Tim Madigan (I’m Proud of You), Melton McLaurin (The Marines of Montford Point), David Guy (Jake Fades),  Georgann Eubanks (Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains), Zelda Lockhart (Cold Running Creek), Mike Lassiter (Our Vanishing Americana: A North Carolina Portrait), Joe and Terry Graedon (Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy), Fred Hobson (Off the Rim), and William Powell (Encyclopedia of North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.