Celebrated author, essayist, and educator Drew Bratcher joins King’s Institute for Faith & Culture (IFC) speaker series with two presentations on Monday, Oct. 16.
At 9:15 a.m. in King’s Memorial Chapel, he will offer “Great Distances, Deep Delight: Some Notes on Storytelling,” and at 7 p.m. that evening will appear for “The Story and the Song: A Reading and Conversation with Drew Bratcher” at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol. Both events are open to the public and free of charge.
Born in Nashville, Bratcher is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, and he received his MFA from the University of Iowa. His writing, which often focuses on art and culture in the American South, has appeared in Garden & Gun, Image Journal, Oxford American, Paris Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
He worked as a feature writer and assistant editor at Washingtonian magazine, where he also wrote a monthly book column, Washington Read. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, he has also written “Bub: Essays from Just North of Nashville,” his first book, an essay collection that is part a country music review and part memoir.
“The best writing often comes from those authors who love and understand music,” said Martin Dotterweich, Ph.D., director of the IFC. “The symphony of the world around them comes to dwell in their pages, enlivening them with harmony and rhythm and offering experiences that can comfort or challenge us. Drew’s grounding in Nashville, in a community where storytelling is in the blood, brings the Southern U.S. and the world of his grandfather to life in a way that only a native speaker and lover of music can, and we look forward to having him share time with students and the community.”
Bratcher has taught or worked in writing centers at American University, Wheaton College, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Iowa, where he received the Carl Klaus Teaching Award for exceptional talent as a teacher of creative writing.
King’s Institute for Faith & Culture speaker series continues Nov. 6 with New York Times columnist Esau McCaulley for the 2023 Frederick Buechner Lecture, and University of Virginia Professor of Law Barbara Armacost on Nov. 13.
