Contact:  Sharon Fisher
January 30th, 2009

MECC Foundation announces the 33rd Annual John Fox, Jr. Literary Festival

The Mountain Empire Community College Foundation announces the 33rd Annual John Fox, Jr. Literary Festival to be held on Wednesday, April 1st from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.  The festival will be held in the Fugate Auditorium, located in Dalton Cantrell Hall on the campus of MECC. 

The festival’s featured authors will be Governor A. Linwood Holton, Jr. and his son, A. Linwood “Woody” Holton, III.  The festival will feature readings and discussion with the authors as well as the announcement the Lonesome Pine Poetry and Short Story contest winners in the middle school, high school, and adult categories.
Governor A. Linwood Holton, Jr., a native of Big Stone Gap, was the Virginia’s first Republican governor since 1884.  Governor Holton graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1944.  After a Navy tour as a submarine officer in World War II, he attended Harvard Law School, earning his LL.B. in 1949.  Elected in 1969, Governor Holton was in office when Mountain Empire Community College opened its doors in 1972.  In 2000, Governor Holton created the Holton Family Scholarship to benefit students at MECC.

As Governor, Holton was a champion of racial justice and equal educational opportunity.  During this year’s Fox Festival, the Governor will be reading from his memoir, Opportunity Time, which covers his journey from the coalfields of southwest Virginia to fulfilling his dream of winning the state’s highest political office, documenting a legacy defined by his dogged efforts to end one-party political rule and racial divisions in the state.

Woody Holton, a University of Richmond history professor, will be reading from his book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, which tells the story of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate.  Unruly Americans was a 2007 National Book Award Finalist.  His previous book, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia also garnered much praise from the academic community.

This year’s Fox Festival will complement the Lonesome Pine Regional Library’s Big Read program, which will celebrate Virginia authors and feature My Ántonia by Willa Cather.  Therefore, in addition to a cash prize, winners of the Lonesome Pine Poetry and Short Story contests will receive a copy of My Ántonia, and several copies of the book will be given away as door prizes at the festival.  The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.

More Press Releases