Julia Keller, a Huntington native and winner of the Pulitzer Prize will speak on two occasions in Charleston this week. Among other things, she'll talk about practically growing up on Marshall's campus, her transition from nonfiction to fiction writing, and how the mountain state has, surprisingly, inspired her work.
She'll be speaking at the University of Charleston's Builder's luncheon meeting on Wednesday. The meet-and-greet session will begin at 11:30 a.m. and the luncheon will follow at noon in the Erma Byrd Gallery on the University of Charleston's campus.
Representing the University of Charleston, Stephanie Martin said the luncheon is filling up quickly and that people should RSVP to her no later than Monday afternoon. To reserve a spot, email Martin at stephaniemartin@ucwv.edu or call her 304-357-4734. The luncheon costs $18 to attend.
For those unable to catch Keller at UC or in case the luncheon fills up, Keller will be speaking at Taylor Books, located on Capitol St. in downtown Charleston, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Folks attending either event will be able to purchase Keller's novels, including her newest book in her Bell Elkins' crime series, "Last Ragged Breath."
Keller said she'll read a scene from the book, which came out in August. The chosen passage explores a fictional character's reflection on his memories of the Buffalo Creek Flood, a real disaster that occurred in Logan County in 1972 when a coal company's slurry impoundment dam burst. The dam unleashed millions of gallons of waste water onto the residents living along Buffalo Creek Hollow, killing 125 people.
There's a lot of West Virginia in Keller's novels.
Before starting work on the first novel in her crime series, "A Killing in the Hills," Keller said she read many West Virginian authors, especially the work of poet Irene McKinney. McKinney moved away from West Virginia, but chose to return to her family's farm in Barbour County. Her poetry reflects the beautiful, rugged West Virginia landscape and the passion found in the people that lived close to the land and close to one another.
Those roots - living in the mountains and the types of people found in those rural West Virginia towns - inspired her.
Keller's protagonist in the series, Bell Elkins, returns to her home state and begins practicing law in Acker's Gap, West Virginia. It's a fictional town inspired by Guyandotte, West Virginia, a small section of Huntington that Keller lived close to growing up.
During both of her talks, Keller said she'll explore what makes West Virginia so special "both as a subject for fiction and as a place to be from and a place to come to."
Although the mountain state fills her imagination now, Keller will admit that it first came to her as a surprise.
"I was as surprised as anyone else that what I wanted to write about was West Virginia," Keller said.
Keller said she realized, "This is where I'm from. This is the ground that gave rise to me. This is where I'm going to make ground in the literary sense."
After writing for the Chicago Tribune for more than 10 years, Keller left her role as the Tribune's book critic in 2012 to pursue her fictional writing career full-time. She's currently working on the fifth book in her crime series, and said that she just recently signed a book deal to write a science fiction trilogy.
"I think you can only give your all to one thing. I was in a crossroad ... But this is what I had always intended to do with my life - write fiction."
Keller is also the author of "Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It," a nonfiction account of Richard Gatling, the inventor of the Gatling gun.
In 2005, she won the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for a three-part series she wrote for the Chicago Tribune about the deadly tornado outbreak in Utica, Illinois in 2004. It was the Tribune's first and, so far, its only Pulitzer in feature writing.
Keller graduated from Marshall University, and later obtained a doctoral degree in English literature at Ohio State University. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and has taught at the University of Chicago, Notre Dame and Princeton.
Occasionally, Keller said she still reviews books for the Chicago Tribune and for NPR.
Reach Anna Patrick at anna.patrick@wvgazette.com or 304-348-4881.