Mark your calendar: author Jeff Biggers will be in Chattanooga on March 24th to discuss his latest book, the United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America.  Biggers gave a reading about a year ago at UTC & the event was great. His work is appropriate for many disciplines & I encourage you to attend and pass this note along to your students!  More details below:
 
Time: Saturday, March 24, 2007 7:00 PM
Location: Rock Point Books
Title of Event: Reading and signing with US of Appalachia author, Jeff Biggers 

APPALACHIA NEEDS NO DEFENSE. IT NEEDS MORE DEFENDERS.

Rock Point Books welcomes Jeff Biggers, author of US of Appalachia, for a reading and signing on Saturday, March 24th at 7PM.

Beyond its mythology in the American imagination, Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States--a cradle of U.S. freedom and independence, and a hot bed for literature and music. Some of the most quintessential and daring American innovations, rebellions, and social movements have emerged from an area often stereotyped as a quaint backwater. In the process, immigrants from the Appalachian diaspora have become some of our nation's most famous leaders.

Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, educator, radio correspondent, and community organizer across the United States, Europe, India and Mexico. His award-winning stories have appeared on NPR, PRI, and in scores of travel, literary and music magazines, and national and foreign newspapers. He has been a commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition and for Pacific News Service national syndication.

His work has received numerous honors, including an American Book Award, a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, a Field Foundation Fellowship and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. He serves as a contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review, and is a member of the PEN American Center. In the 1990s, as part of his work to develop literacy and literary programs in rural, reservation and neglected communities in the American Southwest, he founded the Northern Arizona Book Festival. In the 1980s, Biggers served as an assistant to former Senator George McGovern in Washington, DC, and as a personal aide to Rev. William Sloane Coffin at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Born in Ohio, raised in Illinois and Arizona, he earned a B.A. in History and English at Hunter College in New York City. He also studied at the University of California in Berkeley, Columbia University and the University of Arizona. He and his wife Carla, and their two boys, Diego and Massimo, presently divide their time between Illinois and Italy. 

Learn more at: http://www.jeffbiggers.com/ <http://www.jeffbiggers.com/> 


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