When the news weighs us down, when we question whether we can make a difference, when despair threatens to overcome us, how can we find the hope to act? How can the covenant of community empower us? Using examples from his forthcoming book, “Heroes and Other Mortals,” Frye Gaillard will talk about individuals who faced hard realities and worked to make them better. Jane McAlister Pope will offer personal reflections on the need to see clearly, act fearlessly, gather allies and approach a seemingly dark future with light.
Frye Gaillard, who recently retired as Writer in Residence at the University of South Alabama, is the former Southern Editor at The Charlotte Observer and author of more than 30 books, including “A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s,” “Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America” and “Watermelon Wine: The Spirit of Country Music.” Frye has won the Lillian Smith Book Award and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Museum Literary Prize. Two of his books – “The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance,” coauthored with Cynthia Tucker, and “A Hard Rain” – were named by NPR to its list of best books in the years they were published. He lives in Mobile, Alabama.
Jane McAlister Pope is a retired newspaper editor who spent most of her career at The Charlotte Observer. She has spoken and led retreats at a variety of churches since the 1980s, most recently for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Lake Norman. Jane still edits and writes, but these days most of her time and energy go to helping her preschool grandchildren find wonder, light and love in the world. She lives in Davidson, North Carolina.
