IMMEDIATE SEPTEMBER 9, 2004

SHEARER TO GIVE CORDELL LECTURE SEPTEMBER 28 AT ABAC

TIFTON—Southern author and professor Cynthia Shearer will be the featured speaker at the next edition of the Tom M. Cordell Distinguished Lecture Series on Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. in the Cordell Conference Room of the Carlton Center on the Abraham Baldwin College campus.

Sponsored by the ABAC Foundation, the event is free of charge. Seating will be on a first come, first served basis.

Shearer’s earlier works included a variety of published essays and short stories. She has won honors such as the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship – Fiction for 2000 and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Prize in 1996.

She published her first novel, The Wonder Book of the Air, in 1996. Her new release, The Celestial Jukebox, is due out on shelves in 2005.

Shearer holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi, and a B.A. in English from Valdosta State University, with a secondary school certification in English.

Originally from Massachusetts, Shearer grew up in Alapaha, and then spent a number of years in Oxford, Miss., where she was curator of author William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak. She now lives in Texas with her husband and daughter as an adjunct instructor at Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth.

The series is named in honor of Cordell, who was the director of ABAC’s continuing education program for 39 years. He retired in 1979 and passed away in 1991.

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