The Power of Diane Oliver’s Voice — Community Conversation with Charlotte Lit

Charlotte Lit is hosting a Community Conversation, The Power of Diane Oliver’s Voice, on Thursday, February 20, 2025, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

This event is free, but RSVPs are required.

In 1966, a month before graduating with an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and two months shy of her 23rd birthday, Charlotte native Diane Oliver — a talented emerging fiction writer — was killed in a motorcycle accident. Now fourteen of her stories have been published in the collection Neighbors and Other Stories (Grove Atlantic, 2024). According to author Tayari Jones, who wrote the introduction, “Oliver demonstrates a gorgeously layered understanding of the range of Black life in the South.” The book won the Constellation Award from American Short Fiction; was long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Oprah Daily.

Join Charlotte Lit for a community conversation about and appreciation of Oliver’s work, in which Lit member Helen Fowler will present a short overview of the writer’s life and engage in conversation with Diane Oliver’s sister, Cheryl Oliver, and niece, Kimberly McGregor, about the influences on her work. The conversation will be followed by a discussion of two of Oliver’s stories (“Neighbors” and “Key to the City”) led by Helen. You don’t need to have read Oliver’s work to attend. Copies of Neighbors and Other Stories will be for sale.

Charlotte Lit

 

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