Event 3

I attended an outside event on campus in Mitchell Hall to see a book reading by Elizabeth Spencer. She was born and raised in Carroll County, Mississippi. She started telling stories at the age of 6. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, and she has been awarded the 2001 Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and five O. Henry Awards. She is also a founding member of the fellowship of the Southern Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She read from two books the Landscapes of the Heart and The Southern Woman. The Landscapes of the Heart was a nonfiction book about her life. She read from a chapter of her life that had included Memphis, TN, which she thought it was appropriate since she was in Memphis at the time giving the book reading.
I really liked the part where she talks about small towns because as she was reading a section where she was talking on how in a small town everyone knows your business. I was thinking that is so right because I live in a county were everyone knows everyone’s scandals and secrets. She was reading that everyone had to dress a certain way around this one woman that was friends with her grandmother, and the way you dressed represented your reputation around her and how she would look at you. This woman took trips to Memphis to go shopping which everyone would do every once in a while just to go major shopping. She would only take the people closest to her, and Elizabeth Spencer was one who went on shopping trips with her. As she was reading I could picture the scenes especially since she used a lot of descriptive words about the people and scenery. I enjoyed this event because her style of writing and what I have heard from a section of her book seems like something I would read. Just from going to this event I want to buy her books and read them.