Local author Kathy Bradley will headline EGSC Vision Series Event in November
Last edited: October 17, 2022 by
East Georgia State College (EGSC) is excited to welcome local author Kathy Bradley to the college for the next Vision Series event. The event will be held on National Author’s Day, Tuesday, November 1, at 11 a.m. EGSC faculty, staff, students, and the community are all invited to attend the free event. Bradley’s speech will be held in the Gambrell Building Auditorium on the EGSC-Swainsboro Campus. She will conclude her speech with a book signing for people in attendance. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
A lawyer by training and a storyteller by nature, Kathy A. Bradley has been writing from her family farm in southeast Georgia for more than 20 years as a newspaper columnist and magazine contributor.
Kathy is the author of two books, Breathing and Walking Around and Wondering Toward Center, for which she received Georgia Author of the Year Awards in 2013 and 2017. She has also received the Will D. Campbell Prize for Creative Nonfiction, was a finalist for the Foreward INDIES Book of the Year Award in Essay, and was a nominee for the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award (SONWA).
Breathing and Walking Around is not a memoir. It is a record of four years’ worth of observations of common people, everyday events, and the natural world made by Kathy Bradley from her home in the coastal plains of South Georgia. A lawyer by training, a storyteller by nature, she shares with precision and layer upon layer of sensory image simple tales that emerge, in the end, as parables.
Beginning at Sandhill, the house she built on her family farm, Bradley takes the reader with her as she walks miles of dirt roads with the dogs Lily and Tamar, alert to the details of rural living – the movement of the seasons, the nearness and unpredictability of wildlife, the sights and sounds otherwise drowned out by 21st century living. The meandering continues down the Atlantic beaches, the shorelines of inland lakes, backroads, and interstates, and we are at her shoulder as she, like a paleontologist, uncovers joy in the magic and mystery of the familiar and the brand-new.
But Breathing and Walking Around is a true story and, so, along with the joy there are moments of questioning and uncertainty, moments when doubt challenges faith. It is in these moments, when Bradley struggles to bring order to her own life, that she most clearly articulates the universal truths that weave through all our stories, ribbons of continuity and hope. Breathing and Walking Around began life as newspaper columns, each dated entry independent and viable on its own, unconnected to any other. Only upon preparation for publication was it clear that they told one story. And that that story was a part of the one big story that includes us all.
About EGSC’s Vision Series:
The Vision Series at EGSC is an initiative that brings programs of intellectual and cultural enrichment to the College and its broader constituency. Since its inception, the Vision Series has hosted outstanding personalities, authors, newsmakers, musical performances, dance companies, and theatrical productions. Through sponsored field trips, students and community members have opportunities to attend exhibitions and dramatic productions, not only in Georgia, but in neighboring states, as well.
