Author and Candidate for W.Va Governor Speaks Monday at Alden Library
Contact: Diana Beeson, (740) 597-1663 or beeson@ohio.edu
ATHENS, Ohio (September 22, 2000) -- Denise Giardina, an award-winning author, journalist and independent candidate for West Virginia governor, will lead a discussion and book signing at 1 p.m. Monday, Sept 25 in the Friends of the Library Room at Ohio University's Alden Library.
Giardina has written four novels, "Good King Harry," "Storming Heaven," "The Unquiet Earth" and "Saints and Villains." "Storming Heaven" was a selection of the Book of the Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. Turner Network Television has optioned the book for a television miniseries. "The Unquiet Earth" received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the Lillian Smith Award for fiction, the oldest literary award in the South. "Saints and Villains" won the 1999 Boston Book Review Fisk Fiction Prize and was a semifinalist for the 2000 International Dublin Literacy Award, the world's richest literary prize.
Giardina's op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She wrote about her experiences during the 1989 Pittston coal strike for the "Nation," "Southern Exposure" and the "Village Voice." She also is the author of an award-winning screenplay, "The Gift Horse," produced by West Virginia Public Television in 1996.
Giardina grew up in a coal camp in McDowell County, West Virginia. She earned a bachelor's degree in history from West Virginia Wesleyan College, a master's degree in divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary and is a licensed lay preacher in the Episcopal Church. She now lives in Charleston, W.Va., where she is writer in residence at West Virginia State College.
