Book signing with E. Fred Carlisle set noon to 4 p.m. Aug. 5
Most Grayson County, Virginia residents understand how a person can be shaped by their home. This relationship is the subject of a new book, Hollow and Home, by E. Fred Carlisle, who was inspired by a Galax native’s deep, complicated love for Grayson County.
As part of the book’s launch, Carlisle will be signing copies at Chapters Bookshop from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5.
“[It] touches every experience and concept in this book,” said Carlisle. “My story—or better, my understanding of it—begins with James M. Cox and the mountain valley where I had recently come to live.”
Carlisle met Cox at Indiana University. What began as an academic mentor, mentee relationship, later grew into a close friendship. After reconnecting years later, they had many conversations about Cox’s family history, Brookside farm, the North and the South, his sense of place, and his relationship to the past.
“He helped me learn to think in new ways about the past and place,” said Carlisle. “He forced me, in effect, to begin thinking about my own past and the places in my life.”
When Carlisle moved to Clover Hollow near Blacksburg, Virginia, his experiences with Cox and his fifth and sixth-generation neighbors, led him on a journey to discover his hometown roots in Delaware, Ohio.
Hollow and Home: A History of Self and Place, set to be released Aug. 1, explores the ways the primary places in our lives shape the individuals we become — and how vibrant, supportive communities can form in unexpected places.
Poignant and powerful with a light touch of theory, Carlisle concentrates on the two places he couldn’t leave behind – a rural community and a mid-sized town.
Joseph A. Amato, author of Everyday Life: How the Ordinary Became Extraordinary calls the book “open, direct, economical, and vividly honest.”
Carlisle says he hopes that themes of “Hollow and Home” transcend specific localities and speak to the relationship of self and place everywhere.
About the author
E. Fred Carlisle has been writing about identity and place for years. He is the author of four previous books—two memoirs and studies of Walt Whitman and of Loren Eiseley. A former provost at Virginia Tech, he grew up in Ohio, enjoyed a long academic career, lived for a decade in the rural Virginia mountains, and now divides his time between Virginia and South Florida.