The Big Read 2010

The Big Read is Catawba County’s community-wide, year-long reading initiative between Lenoir-Rhyne University Visiting Writers Series, Catawba Valley Community College, the Catawba County Library system, and the Hickory Public Library system.

The mission of The Big Read project is to celebrate the power of books and the importance of reading.

Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez

Friday, April 16, 2010, 7:00 P.M.
P.E. Monroe Auditorium
Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, N.C.

This year’s book for The Big Read is Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent. Internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez is the author of many publications that have culminated in her position as one of the most significant Latina writers of her generation. Alvarez’s work, like How Tia Lola Came to Visit Stay (2001), How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), and In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), has crossed boundaries of generations and ethnicity. Alvarez has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation as well as recognition and awards from several organizations like the American Academy for Poetry (1974). Her most recent book, Once Upon a Quinceañera (2007), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.