Cherokee/Appalachian author, poet, and storyteller Marilou Awiakta will be the featured speaker in the Presidential Distinguished Lecture Series at East Tennessee State University on Monday, April 9, at 7 p.m.
Her talk, entitled “Roots of Survival: The Web of Mountain Life,” will take place in the ballroom on the third floor of the D.P. Culp University Center. It is free and open to the public.
“When I was young and told my mother I wanted to be a poet and writer,” Awiakta says, “she would always respond, ‘That’s good. And what will you do for the people?’ My work has been my response to her question.”
Born in Knoxville and brought up in Oak Ridge, Awiakta weaves her Cherokee/Appalachian heritages with science to express her basic theme, respect for the web of life.
National and international recognition for her work began in 1978 with her first book, “Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet.”
She has been featured in three television films for PBS, including “Telling Tales.” Poesie Premiere, a French literary journal, published a 35-page retrospective of her poetry in its winter 1997 issue. For its millennium issue, a British Internet magazine for women, BeMe.com, commissioned an essay which Awiakta entitled “Sunrise in Cyberspace.”
The United States Information Agency selected Awiakta’s books for its 1985 global tour of cultural centers. Her poetry and essays have been published in numerous anthologies, and Awiakta’s life and work are profiled in the Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the U.S., which also includes her essay, “Grandmothers.”
Her third book, “Selu”: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom,” was a 1994 Quality Paperback Book Club selection. The audio version was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1995. A quotation from Selu is engraved in the Riverwall of the Bicentennial Capitol Mall in Nashville, and a poem, “Motheroot,” is inlaid in the Fine Arts Walkway at UCLA-Riverside.
Awiakta’s work was also featured at the International Congress of Poetry in Brussels, Belgium.
During the past year, new editions of her classic works have been published: “Abiding Appalachia,” with photographs, and a full-color edition of “Rising Fawn” and “The Fire Mystery.”
Awiakta was recognized earlier this year for her work in civil rights by the University of Tennessee at Martin.
She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1958 and recently was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Albion College in Michigan.
Awiakta is a recipient of the Appalachian Heritage Writer’s Award, an award for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature from the Appalachian Writers Association, a citation for Educational Service to Appalachia from Carson-Newman College, and the Distinguished Tennessee Writers Award from the Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference.
Her lecture will be followed by a book-signing and reception in the Culp Center’s East Tennessee Room.
For more information or for assistance in seating persons with disabilities, call 439-6440.

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