Cover To Cover is the anchor program for GPB’s literary coverage. Cover To Cover features a collection of distinctive Southern voices interviewing Georgia writers, Southern writers, and writers dealing with the South. The GPB Southern Lit Cadre will provide you with a varied, weekly glimpse at fiction, non-fiction, history, poetry, and even the occasional ‘old school’ nod to Flannery O’Connor or William Faulkner.


Thursday, September 18, 2008

Tony Earley on Cover to Cover


Jesse Freeman weighs on in his interview with Tony Earley, which airs Sunday night at 8pm on Cover To Cover--

The Blue Star
is a sequel you can enjoy without having read its predecessor. However, if you consider yourself a lover of great contemporary fiction, you’ve probably already read Jim the Boy. Book two in this presumed trilogy places Jim in his senior year of high school in the Western North Carolina town of Aliceville. More to the point, it places our wide-eyed protagonist on the precipice of love, war and tragedy.

Tony Earley joins us to talk about Jim and his other wonderful characters that bring to life the Greatest Generation. He talks about the importance of his influences (Wila Cather!) and his own experience as a child in Appalachia. You’ll find Tony as humble as the avuncular Glass brothers (Jim’s surrogate fathers) and as witty as Dennis Deane (Jim’s loose-lipped running partner). Tony approaches an interview thoughtfully and we think you’ll appreciate the contemplative way he looks back at his works just as you will enjoy the earnestness of the works themselves.