[act-ma] 5/16 (Wed.) Cambridge Forum Hosts Humorist Roy Blount, Jr.

[Cambridge Forum]

Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
				

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. discusses
"Dispatches from Up South"
with Journalist Charlie Pierce
7:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Free and Open to the Public

Press Release

	Cambridge Forum and Harvard Book Store host American humorist and author Roy Blount., Jr. discussing his latest book Long Time Leaving: Dispatches >From Up South on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.  Radio and print journalist Charlie Pierce moderates the forum.  The program begins at 7:30 p.m. at First Parish, 3 Church Street, Harvard Square, in Cambridge.  

	Tickets are required for this event.  $5 tickets (with a book discount coupon) are available from Harvard Book Store at 617-661-1515.  Free tickets (with no discount coupon) are available from Cambridge Forum at 617-495-2727.

	You can take the boy out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the boy.  Roy Blount Jr. grew up in Decatur, Georgia and now lives in western Massachusetts.  His new collection of essays Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South is sly, dry, hilarious look at his own dueling loyalties across the great North/South divide.  As Blount writes, "I left the South in search of Enlightenment. . . . [but] when my [Northern] local paper announces a festival to 'celebrate differently-abled dogs,' . . . it’s hard for me to imagine that a dog with three legs minds being called a three-legged dog."

	Roy Blount, Jr. is the author of nineteen previous books, including reflections on a Southern president (Jimmy Carter), a biography of Robert E. Lee, a celebration of New Orleans (Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans), and an anthology of Southern humor.  He is a panelist on NPR's Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and president of the Authors Guild. 

	Charlie Pierce writes the regular column "Pierced" in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and is well known to public radio listeners for his commentary on Bill Littlefield’s weekly sports magazine It's Only a Game and on NPR's Wait, Wait . . .  Don't Tell Me where he and Roy Blount are often fellow panelists.

	Cambridge Forums are open to the public.  Open discussion follows speaker presentation.  Events are taped and edited for public radio broadcast throughout the nation.  Edited CDs are available to the public by contacting 617-495-2727.   Select forums can be viewed in their entirety on demand by visiting our website at www.cambridgeforum.org and clicking on the WGBH Forum Network. ####



Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone/fax:  617-495-2727
email:  mailto:director at cambridgeforum.org
website:  http://www.cambridgeforum.org

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