Novelist Elaine Neil Orr to read at ECU
Elaine Neil Orr (Contributed Photo)
Elaine Neil Orr will read from her novel, “Swimming Between Worlds,” at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 28 in East Carolina University’s Faulkner Gallery on the second floor of Joyner Library. The event is free and open to the public, and Orr’s books will be available for purchase at the event.
“Swimming Between Worlds,” Orr’s second novel, is set during the 1960s in Winston-Salem. The coming-of-age story centers on two white Southerners recently graduated from college, Tacker Hart and Kate Monroe, who struggle to gain a new understanding of social justice in the Civil Rights era. The novel uses the perspectives of its protagonists to create a compelling narrative about what it means to be a productive citizen in a changing South. Deep South Magazine observes, “Orr succeeds in injecting romance and a certain hopefulness into a story . . . without trivializing the historical situation or falling into a pit of white savior complexes.”
Orr was born in Nigeria to missionary parents from North Carolina. Upon returning to the U.S., she earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Louisville and a Ph.D. at Emory University. She is now an English professor at N.C. State University, where she recently received a Distinguished Alumni Research Award and will be inducted into the NCSU Research Academy.
The author’s diasporic upbringing is covered in her memoir, “Gods of Noonday: A White Girl’s African Life.” Her first novel, “A Different Sun,” tells the story of a young 19th-century missionary’s wife whose new husband takes her from their Southern home in the U.S. to live in West Africa for the first years of their marriage.
Orr will answer questions during the reading, which is sponsored by the ECU Department of English and hosted by the staff of the North Carolina Literary Review. Orr was featured in the 2015 issue.
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