Christopher Tilghman, On writing the Mason Family Series, 6:00 Monday, November 14 @ Talbot County Free Library, Easton Branch.Free and open to the public. www.tcfl.org
Nationally-acclaimed author, Christopher Tilghman, will be discussing the sources and writing of his three novels in the Mason Family series. The central location of these stories is a fictionalized version of his ancestral family farm in Queen Anne’s County. He writes: “The Retreat is based on my own family’s farm on the Eastern Shore. Much of the material in these three novels is based on family history and family stories.” The novels follow the lives of several families, both White and Black, from the years just before the Civil War to the outbreak of World War II: a new novel, On the Tobacco Coast, which is due to be published in Spring, 2023, brings the story to its conclusion in the present day.
“Tilghman’s vision of the American past—and particularly of individuals caught in the tidal sweep of history—is dazzling in its precision and clarity,” writes Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain.
Tilghman is a retired professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. He will be discussing his writing with Kerry Folan, a professor of writing and literature at George Mason University, and the founder of Shore Lit, an organization that offers free community author events on the Eastern Shore.
This program is Talbot Library’s contribution to Crossroads: Change in Rural America, a series of public programs supporting the traveling exhibit which will be on view At St. Paul’s Church in Oxford from October 29 through December 16. Crossroads is a Maryland Humanities Museum on Main Street program.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.