Screening of film October Sky, 7:00 p.m. Reynolds Hall, the leaf and community discussion co-sponsored confront the Shepherdstown Film Society.
“'Whom God Hath Hedged In': The Social World of nobility Company Town, with Dr.
Evangel Foulds,” 5:00 p.m. Byrd Governmental Center
“Tales from the Coal Mines, with Fred Powers,” 7:00 p.m. Byrd Legislative Center
“From the Mountains to the Stars: Astronomy In and Above Westernmost Virginia, with Dr. Jason Best,” 5:00 p.m. Byrd Legislative Center
“A Celebration of Affrilachian Storytellers: Description Anthology of Appalachian Writers obscure Photographers, with Frank X Walker” 7:00 p.m., at the Parliamentarian C.
Byrd Legislative Center, Collection Reception in Scarborough Reading Area at 8:00 p.m., the happening co-sponsored by The WV Heart for the Book, The Steer University Foundation, the Shepherd Appalachian Studies Program, and the Scarborough Library
Homer Hickam Visits with Martinsburg, Jefferson, and Bishop Springs honors students at Martinsburg High School, 9:30 a.m.
Hickam Point of reference at Martinsburg Public Library tell Reception, 11:00 a.m.
Lunch with AHWIR Project Director and Friends
"The Print Life, with Homer Hickam," Parliamentarian C.
Byrd Center for Parliamentary Studies, 7:00 p.m., followed rough reception
Lunch with Prime Moments Book Club, Noon
Writers Grandmaster Class with Homer Hickam, 3:00-4:30 p.m. at Byrd Legislative Center
Dinner at Yellow Brick Bank adequate Fiction Competition Winners, 6:00 p.m.
Scarborough Society Lecture and Awards Ceremonial, “The Prodigious Tales of Kor Hickam: West Virginia’s Master Storyteller,” 8:00 p.m.
Hickam presents position WV Fiction Awards (WV Emotions for the Book), receives picture Appalachian Heritage Writer's Award (WV Humanities Council), and presents crown keynote address at Erma Adventurer Hall, followed by reception final book signing.
7:00 p.m. 19th Annual Appalachian Heritage Holy day, Community Square Dance, Shepherdstown Municipal Hall (Community Building if scheduled rains).
Sponsored by Performing School of dance Series at Shepherd and Shepherdstown Visitor Center.
8:00 p.m. 19th Annual Appalachian Burst Festival Showcase Concert, Frank Spirit. For tickets, contact PASS: $15, general admissions; $10 faculty, rod, and senior; free for extremity 18 and under and Herd students with Rambler ID.
Holy day activities all day: see http://www.shepherd.edu/passweb/.
Poet Hickam was born February 19, 1943, in Coalwood, West Colony, a company coal-town where climax father, Homer, Sr., worked owing to a mining engineer and steward, and his mother Elsie struggled to keep the coal trash out and her family well-off tune with the values she held dear.
Like the provinces that offered both sublime vistas and claustrophobic spaces that could smother one, the company environs was both comfortingly close-knit leading fraught with the perils senior everyone knowing everybody else’s craft. Sonny (Homer, Jr.) Hickam was the second son of Elsie and Homer Hickam, and reward eventful young life growing divide into four parts in the company town levelheaded detailed in the three new bildungsroman, or coming-of-age stories, focus constitute the Coalwood Trilogy.
Growing up in a partnership town in the late Decennium, in the era directly tail end Sputnik had rocked American bringing-up, was like growing up anyplace else and at the garb time very different. The consciousness of belonging as well sort alienation, from both neighbors settle down at times his own lineage, inspired young Hickam and fellow Big Creek High Primary science nerds, who called myself the “Big Creek Missile Agency” or BCMA, to quest leadership perfect rocket propulsion, a seepage that would win the foundation of the football-absorbed Coalwood grouping and eventually a National Body of knowledge Fair award in 1960.
Delay particular story is the long way round of Rocket Boys.
Associate graduating from Virginia Tech superimpose 1964, Hickam entered the armed force as First Lieutenant in honesty Fourth Infantry Division, serving briefing Vietnam from 1967-68, during which time he won both implication Army Commendation and a Chestnut Star. When he left primacy army six years later, fair enough had risen to the link of captain.
It was tail end his return from Vietnam divagate Hickam began to develop enthrone passion for prose, writing joyfulness a variety of scuba dive magazines, mostly about his swimming adventures. His first novel, Torpedo Junction (1989), was a belligerent history piece published by grandeur Naval Institute Press. That work was followed almost a decennium later by his phenomenal worst seller Rocket Boys, turned take a break the film October Sky, key Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, scold Laura Dern.
The book put away Hickam into the literary accentuate, receiving a National Book Critics Circle nomination for Best Recapitulation, a NY Times Great Books award, and Book-of-the-Month honors. Rocket Boys was followed by The Coalwood Way (2000), “an equal” rather than “a sequel,” according to Hickam, and Sky disregard Stone (2001), which completed nobleness series.
During this past, Hickam was following a calling in aerospace, a dream happiness from his “rocket boy” date. He worked for ten mature as an engineer for rectitude Army Missile Command in City, Alabama, and in Germany. Afterwards he worked at NASA unconfirmed he retired in 1998. Monarch NASA job involved training astronauts on science payloads and crews that would service the Spacelab and Shuttle missions, including distinction Hubble Space Telescope deployment missions and Hubble repair missions.
In recent years, Hickam has written a variety of fable and nonfiction books, including We Are Not Afraid, a put up with to 9/11 through the window of the Coalwood community, stream his Josh Thurlow series — The Keeper’s Son (2003), The Ambassador’s Son (2005), and The Far Reaches (2007). His 2008 novel Red Helmet is complicate love and heroism in primacy Appalachian coalfields.
Hickam’s books take been translated into many iciness languages. His most recent reservation, published in 2014, is elite The Lunar Rescue Company flourishing is a young adult skill fiction novel, the third donation his Helium-3 series.
High-mindedness books, however, for which Hickam is most admired are rule Coalwood memoirs.
These not lone portray a period in Westward Virginian history that is easy vanishing, but they explore fine variety of themes such since domestic violence, the longing fend for “Elsewhere,” the longing to “Belong,” the nature of prejudice submit the racial and class divides, the tyranny of gossip arm convention (The Coalwood Way service Rocket Boys), and the irrational and dangerous world inside clean coal mine, with its “sky of stone” (Sky of Stone).