Date & Time: Thu, November 4, 2021 | 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Location: Coastal Discovery Museum | 70 Honey Horn Drive, Hilton Head Island (limited seating)
Virtual: Also live-streamed on the Pat Conroy Literary Festival Facebook page
Cost: Free
Reserve Here for In Person: NOW FULL
Join award-winning African American poet, memoirist, teacher, and activist E. Ethelbert Miller for discussion of his newest collection of poetry, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories. He will read and converse with Elizabeth Robin. Questions from the audience will be welcome.
Miller’s appearance is sponsored by the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center and by a grant from South Carolina Humanities, a nonprofit organization inspiring, engaging and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture and heritage.
When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories is E. Ethelbert Miller’s second book of baseball poems. Here he touches new bases. There are poems about Marcel Duchamp and Ornette Coleman as well as Whitey Ford and Don Larsen. Miller’s poems move the outdoor game indoors where there are moments of disappointment and despair. Baseball can be a blues game. Tommy John surgery is a way of holding onto hope. Many of these poems were written during the Covid pandemic. They beckon fans back to the ballpark. They remind us to enjoy a game that is precious, and maybe even essential to our wellness. Coming after If God Invented Baseball, Miller seems to emerge from a literary dugout after a brief rain delay, ready to celebrate the American pastime again.
Thursday, November 4, light refreshments: 5:00-6:00 p.m., author program: 6:00-7:00 p.m. Books available for sale and signing.
About the author:
E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He is the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry including The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller, a comprehensive collection that represents over 40 years of his work. His newest collection is When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories: Poems (September 202). For 17 years, Miller served as the editor of Poet Lore, the oldest poetry magazine published in the United States. His poetry has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Miller is a two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow to Israel. He holds an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Emory and Henry College and has taught at several universities.
Miller is host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and host and producer of The Scholars on UDC-TV. In recent years, Miller has been inducted into the 2015 Washington DC Hall of Fame and awarded the 2016 AWP George Garret Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and the 2016 DC Mayor’s Arts Award for Distinguished Honor. In 2018, he was inducted into Gamma Xi Phi and appointed as an ambassador for the Authors Guild. He was awarded a 2020 grant by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. (Author photo credit): Tom Wolff
About the interviewer:
Elizabeth Robin retired to Hilton Head Island after a 33-year teaching career. She has two chapbooks through Finishing Line Press: Where Green Meets Blue (2018) and Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017). A full-length collection, To My Dreamcatcher, is due in 2022. In 2021 she won the Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship and the John Edward Johnson Prize. A poet that tells the stories of those pushed into the margins, her recent work’s in Poetry on the Comet, Catfish Stew, the Poetry Society of SC Yearbook, Ripples, Ukweli, Drunk Monkeys, The Broadkill Review, and Local Life Magazine. Robin emcees an open mic and partners with arts groups to bring literarati to Hilton Head Island. www.elizabethrobin.com
Photos as well as short bios of all festival presenters are on the Presenter Page.
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