Tony Earley Shares His Book, The Blue Star
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, October 24, at 9:30 PM

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two. Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the Navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie's heart in his absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven, and gives a young man's emotions a grown man's gravity.

With the uncanny insight into the well-intentioned heart that made Jim the Boy a favorite novel for thousands of readers, Tony Earley has fashioned another nuanced and unforgettable portrait of America in another time--making it again even realer than our own day.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, October 24, at 9:30 PM, Earley discusses The Blue Star, this timeless and moving story of discovery, loss and growing up.

Tony Earley is the author of four books: Here We Are in Paradise, a collection of stories; the novel Jim the Boy; the personal essay collection Somehow Form a Family; and The Blue Star, 2008. A winner of a National Magazine Award for fiction, he was named one of the twenty best writers of his generation by both Granta, in 1996, and The New Yorker in 1999. His fiction and/or nonfiction have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South and many other magazines and anthologies. He is a native of western North Carolina and a graduate of Warren Wilson College and The University of Alabama. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and daughter, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s engaging interview with Tony Earley on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, October 24, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, October 26, at 5 PM.

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: Frances Mayes (A Year in the World), Rob Christensen (The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics), Robert Morgan (Boone), Eleanora Tate (Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance), Eric Wilson (Against Happiness), Wayne Caldwell (Cataloochee), Theda Perdue (The Cherokee Nation and The Trail of Tears), Bernie Harberts (Too Proud to Ride a Cow), Therese Fowler (Souvenir), Joe Glatthaar (General Lee’s Army), Nortin Hadler (Worried Sick), Anna Hayes (Without Precedent), Jean Anderson (A Love Affair with Southern Cooking), J.D. Rhoades (Breaking Cover), Anna Rubino (Queen of the Oil Club), Nancy Peacock (A Broom of One's Own), Louise Hawes(Black Pearls) and  Cindy H. Ramsey (Boys of the Battleship 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.