Greensboro College Professor’s Story Is Published in LGBTQ Anthology; Reading Scheduled for April 14
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Wayne Johns, associate professor of English, Communication & Media Studies at Greensboro College, has a short story published in a new anthology of LGBTQ writing by authors with North Carolina ties.
The book, “Every True Pleasure: LGBTQ Tales of North Carolina” (University of North Carolina Press), was edited by Wilton Barnhardt, a former writer for Sports Illustrated who is now a professor in the M.F.A. program in creative writing at N.C. State University.
Johns’s story, “Where Your Children Are,” is set in the summer of 1980 at the height of the Atlanta child murders. The story depicts the tensions of race relations, and the looming threat of violence in that place, alongside the narrator’s awakening of sexual identity.
“I hope that it reverberates for any reader, in that it is also just a coming-of-age story that happens to be set in the deep South,” Johns says. Primarily a poet, Johns says that this is one of the few short stories he has written.
The contributors include people who are straight, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
Other contributors to the anthology include David Sedaris (“Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day”), Kelly Link (the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Get in Trouble”), Allan Gurganus (“Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” “White People”), Randall Kenan (“Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,” “The Fire This Time”), and Garrard Conley (“Boy Erased”).
Johns, Barnhardt, and contributors Zelda Lockhart and Emily Chavez will be reading from the anthology from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 14, at the Greensboro Public Library, 219 N. Church St. The event is free. For more information, contact Beth Sheffield at 336-373-3617 or email beth.sheffield@greensboro-nc.gov.
Johns holds a B.A. from St. Andrews Presbyterian College, an M.F.A. from Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. from Florida State University. He joined the faculty in 2007.
Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and, spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.
Founded in 1838 and located in downtown Greensboro, the college enrolls about 1,000 students from 29 states and territories, the District of Columbia, and seven foreign countries in its undergraduate liberal-arts program and six master’s degree programs. In addition to rigorous academics and a well-supported Honors program, the school features a 17-sport NCAA Division III athletic program and dozens of service and recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.greensboro.edu.
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