Your future, our focus
Award-winning Wyoming author Alyson Hagy will discuss her latest book “Scribe” Thursday, Oct. 17, at 6:30 p.m. in Grizzly Hall at the Park County Library in Cody. A reception before the reading will get underway at 5:30 p.m.
Hailing from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Hagy is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Wyoming.
Drawing on traditional folktales and Appalachian history and culture, she crafted a novel that explores migration, pandemic disease and the rise of authoritarianism.
According to the book’s synopsis, “In the aftermath of a brutal civil war and the deadly spread of contagious fevers, abandoned farmhouses litter remote mountain valleys and the economy has been reduced to barter and trade. In this craggy, unwelcoming territory “Scribe’s” central character ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead and becomes known for her skill in writing letters, which she exchanges for scarce resources … When a man with hidden motivations requests a letter, it unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events.”
In addition to being awarded multiple fellowships, Hagy’s work has won several prestigious honors including a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, the High Plains Book Award, the Devil’s Kitchen Award, the Syndicated Fiction Award and been included in Best American Short Stories. Recent fiction has appeared in Drunken Boat, The Idaho Review, Kenyon Review, INCH and Michigan Quarterly Review.
“Scribe” was published in 2018 and has received much praise from publishers across the nation. Booklist described the author’s novel as “Taut and tense, with both a dreamlike quality and a strong sense of place, Hagy’s brief but powerful tale will indelibly haunt readers long after the final page is turned.”
Hagy is the author of several works of fiction including “Hardware River,” “Keeneland,” “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” “Snow, Ashes,” “Ghosts of Wyoming,” “Boleto” and most recently “Scribe.”
She currently lives in Laramie, Wyoming, and enjoys hiking, fishing, tennis, Labrador retrievers, college athletics and making artist’s books.
Admission to this event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided by Friends of the Library.
This event is part of the Northwest College Writers Series. Hagy’s talk is funded by grants from ThinkWY Wyoming Humanities and the Northwest College Foundation and a partnership with the Park County Public Library.
For more Northwest College events, visit https://www.nwc.edu/events/.
