Katie Fallon, an outdoor enthusiast and bird lover who authored Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011), kicks off the spring “Writers Read Dinner and Author series,” on Thursday, Jan. 31, at 5:30 p.m., in Eastern Mennonite University’s (EMU) Campus Center room 105.
Reserve tickets online at emu.edu/langlit/writers-read/ or by calling the language & literature department at 540-432-4168 by Friday, Jan. 25.
Cerulean Blues, Fallon’s first book, was recently named a finalist for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. Her essay “Hill of the Sacred Eagles” was selected as a finalist in the Terrain.org 2011 essay contest.
Her work has appeared in a variety of other magazines and literary journals, including The Bark, Fourth Genre, Ecotone, River Teeth, Isotope, Fourth River, Appalachian Heritage, Now & Then, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rivendell, and The New River Gorge Adventure Guide.
“Katie writes with a beautiful mix of passion and gentleness, whether she is minutely describing the habits of an endangered songbird or her reactions as a professor to the tragedy at Virginia Tech,” said Kirsten Beachy, assistant professor of English at EMU.
Fallon has taught creative writing at West Virginia University and Virginia Tech. She co-founded the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the region’s birds through research, education and rehabilitation.
More information
Several of the author’s books will be available for purchase. A book signing and short question-and-answer session with the author will follow her reading. Sign-language interpretation is available upon request.
• General admission, $15
• EMU students with a full meal plan, $5
• All other students, $7