‘An Imaginative Proclivity’: Gary Carden and “Stories I Lived to Tell”
In “Stories I Lived to Tell: An Appalachian Memoir” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024, 152 pages), 89-year-old storyteller and writer Gary Carden spends much of his time revisiting his youth and childhood.
Of parched corn and rank strangers: Ahead of new book, Gary Carden reflects on a lifetime of storytelling
So I walk into Gary Carden’s room in the ICU and the first thing he says to me in his sonorous growl is, “OK newspaperman, take this down. I want you to turn this into a story.”
Notes from a plant nerd: Playing with a full deck
Dear reader, yeah, I mean you. You who are reading this while holding the paper in your hands or scanning through on your computer, tablet or phone. Yeah, you. I am so deeply grateful to you for reading my articles. This marks the 52nd column that I have written for The Smoky Mountain News, with one running every couple of weeks for the last two years or so. That’s one for each week in the year. One for every card in a deck.
Wild nights and the bar fight
“There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.”
— Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”
Freedom Park lifts up heroic stories
The state government complex in Raleigh is home to a new park. Constructed on Lane Street between the legislative building and the governor’s mansion, North Carolina Freedom Park was designed by the late Phil Freelon of the architecture firm Perkins + Will.
