KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The free community reading program sponsored by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville will begin Sept. 8 in Anderson County.
Enrollment for the three-month program, which will meet in the Oak Ridge Public Library, is limited to 25 people. The program is sponsored by the UT-Knoxville College of Liberal Arts and is held in eight East Tennessee counties.
The program theme, reading selections, and discussion questions were developed by Dr. Jack E. Reese, university professor and UT-Knoxville chancellor emeritus.
Participants receive a set of six books and a reading guide. Three discussions, scheduled about five weeks apart, will be led by UT-Knoxville faculty.
The six books for this year’s program relate to the theme ”Place and Family in Contemporary Southern Fiction.”
”The novels and authors selected for this series are very different, but they are linked both by geography and the culture which profoundly shaped them,” Reese said.
”All of the books represent the vitality and richness of contemporary Southern culture, and each adds to our knowledge and awareness of the region in which we live,” he said.
The Anderson County sessions will be held at 2:30 p.m., Sundays, Sept. 8, Oct. 13 and Nov. 17. For more information, call the library at 482-8455.
The books for the first session are ”The Winter People,” by John Ehle and ”I Am One of You Forever,” by Fred Chappell. Both authors are from Western North Carolina.
The second session will cover ”The Third Life of Grange Copeland,” by Alice Walker and ”A Gathering of Old Men,” by Ernest Gaines. The books are about the injustices experienced by Southern blacks.
The books for the last session are ”Ellen Foster,” by Kaye Gibbons and ”Edisto: A Novel,” by Padget Powell. Both are first-person, coming-of-age novels.