ABOUT THE COUNCIL
The Chatham County Literacy Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a United Way-affiliated agency. It partners with Central Carolina Community College to provide free tutoring services for adults in Chatham County.
By Fran Mears
chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
CHAPEL HILL -- Appearances by three nationally acclaimed authors helped the Chatham County Literacy Council raise almost $10,000 for programs to help adult learners gain the skills they need to succeed in life.
Nearly 200 people attended the Authors for Literacy fundraising luncheon featuring Southern authors Doris Betts, Lee Smith and Randall Kenan.
In addition to contributions from ticket sales, the April 21 event at Governors Club raised $5,545 from a silent auction. The winning bids included $300 for a gourmet luncheon for 10 at Galloway Ridge, $320 for a painting by Pittsboro artist Helen Kotsher and $1,200 for a St. Croix vacation.
The donations will help fund the literacy council's tutoring programs for Chatham County adults who want to improve their basic reading, writing and math skills; get a high school equivalency diploma; or learn to speak, read and write in English when it is not their primary language.
"The need in our county is deep, and Chatham County Literacy Council is the only organization positioned to provide for the needs of this population of adult non-readers," said Susan Bridgers, executive director of the nonprofit organization. "The free services we provide to our county residents make our whole community great. When they succeed, we succeed."
Betts, who lives in Pittsboro and taught creative writing at UNC for 32 years, has tutored adult learners in Chatham County and has served on the literacy council's board of directors and its advisory board. She told the luncheon crowd that it doesn't matter whether people pick up classic literature or "pop trash," as long as they are reading something.
"What I know and love are words," and watching as new readers work their way through "the wilderness of metaphor and simile," said Betts, a three-time winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.
Smith grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, where she said she made C's in school and dreamed of fleeing her hometown of Grundy.
"I wanted a black turtleneck and a long cigarette," she said, laughing. When she read James Still's book, "River of Earth," everything changed.
"It was written in Appalachian English. It sounded like everyone in my family," said Smith, who'd found the beginning of her literary voice.
Smith got involved with tutoring at the nonprofit Hindman Settlement School in the Appalachians of Eastern Kentucky. One student, who had hidden his illiteracy for 55 years, told her that when he learned to read "it was like coming out of a deep hole."
"It was wonderful to see the changes that learning to read made. ... I had completely lost the sense of books and reading as empowerment," said Smith, who lives in Hillsborough and recently published her 11th book, "Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger."
"Reading is something we too often take for granted," said Kenan, a professor at UNC and winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He grew up in a Duplin County community where many faced limited opportunities, but he was lucky to be "surrounded by aunts and uncles who were teachers."
A great aunt had him reading by age 4, and over the years he moved from "The Tale of Peter Cottontail" to "Moby Dick" to E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime" to works by Toni Morrison, Anthony Burgess and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who, he said, "showed me where the moon and the stars were."
