By Staff
Converse with author Clyde Edgerton
By DAN PARSONS
Staff Writer
The Friends of the Brown Library had a good year in 2007. Primarily through proceeds from the groups annual book sale, $34,700 was raised last year to benefit the George H. &Laura E. Brown Library, Luis Encinias, president of the Friends of the Brown Library said Sunday at the group’s annual meeting held at the Turnage Theater.
The organization received $8,300 in membership dues, which translates into about 500 members, according to Encinias. The majority of the money raised goes directly to funding programs and purchasing equipment for the library. Last year the library benefited to the tune of $26,000, which purchased computers, book racks and an outside garden bench, among other things for the library. That money also funded a summer reading camp for 364 children who circulated and read at least 900 books, he said.
He also reported about $3,000 the group was able to carry over into 2008 and an endowment balance of $52,200 that is available for capital expenditures at the library. Encinias also mentioned a study recently completed on the possibility of merging Brown Library with the Beaufort-Hyde-Martin Regional Library system.
The event was also the third installment of the Friends’ series of “Conversations with North Carolina Authors.” The featured author Sunday was Durham native Clyde Edgerton, author of novels including “Raney” and “Walking Across Egypt.”
Edgerton, also a folk guitarist and singer, took time to share some of the stories he has heard and experienced that influenced the characters and plots in his novels. He relayed one story about a conversation with another author from the Northeast who thought it an advantage to be a Southern author.
Most of the elements of his novels are not made up, but pieced together from his own experiences and from those of others he meets. Each time Edgerton hears a story he thinks would be useful for his writing, he jots it down in a notebook he carries in his pocket, he said. Some of the stories he hears inspire folk tunes, some of which he shared with the Friends gather in the theater.
Rachel Mills, a member of the Brown Library Board of Trustees, said Edgerton writing process and his novels embody the purpose of lending libraries.