Spartanburg, S.C. –  Award-winning author David Joy will visit the University of South Carolina Upstate on Tuesday, Sept. 25, where he will deliver the keynote address for the Preface First-Year Reading Program at 6 p.m. in the Sansbury Campus Life Center Ballroom. A book signing will follow Joy’s address. The event is free and open to the public.

USC Upstate first-year students are reading Joy’s novel, “The Weight of This World,” which represents a new generation of Southern literature that combines a deep love of the places and communities of Appalachia with an unflinching look at the realities of our lives.

The Preface program introduces USC Upstate students to the joy of reading critically and using academic disciplines and methods to approach complex issues.

“Preface helps new students make connections to each other and to the university and community,” said Dr. Celena Kusch, chair of the Division of Languages, Literature, and Composition. “By exposing students to national and regional speakers and community and campus experts, the Preface program gives students an opportunity to discuss a shared reading together in order to increase understanding of the important issues we all face today.”

Joy writes a powerful story about the inescapable weight of the past in “The Weight of This World,” which is set in the mountains of North Carolina. A combat veteran returned from war, Thad Broom can’t leave the hardened world of Afghanistan behind, nor can he forgive himself for what he saw there. His mother, April, is haunted by her own demons, a secret trauma she has carried for years.

Between them is Aiden McCall, loyal to both but unable to hold them together. Connected by bonds of circumstance and duty, friendship and love, these three lives are blown apart when Aiden and Thad witness the accidental death of their drug dealer and a riot of dope and cash drops in their laps. On a meth-fueled journey to nowhere, they will either find the grit to overcome the darkness or be consumed by it.

David Joy is the author of the Edgar nominated novel Where All Light Tends To Go (Putnam, 2015) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, 2018). He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award. Joy is the recipient of an artist fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. His latest short stories and essays have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, Garden & Gun, and The Bitter Southerner. He lives in the North Carolina mountains.

For more information, contact Dr. Celena E. Kusch, chair of the  Division of Languages, Literature, and Composition, at 864-503-5850.

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