The Power of Diane Oliver's Voice

Thursday, February 20, 2025 @ 6:00pm
Charlotte Lit

In 1966, a month before graduating with an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and two months shy of her 23rd birthday, Charlotte native Diane Oliver — a talented emerging fiction writer — was killed in a motorcycle accident. At the time, her participation in the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the publication of her story “Neighbors” in Prize Stories, 1967: The O. Henry Awards were rare for a Black woman writer. She published only four stories before her career was cut short. 

Now fourteen of her stories have been posthumously published in the collection Neighbors and Other Stories (Grove Atlantic, 2024). According to author Tayari Jones, who wrote the introduction, "Oliver demonstrates a gorgeously layered understanding of the range of Black life in the South." The book won the Constellation Award from American Short Fiction; was long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Oprah Daily.

Join us for a community conversation about and appreciation of Oliver's work, in which Lit member Helen Fowler will present a short overview of the writer's life and engage in conversation with Diane Oliver's sister, Cheryl Oliver, and niece, Kimberly McGregor, about the influences on her work. The conversation will be followed by a discussion of two of Oliver's stories ("Neighbors" and "Key to the City") led by Helen. You don't need to have read Oliver's work to attend. Copies of Neighbors and Other Stories will be for sale.

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Thursday, February 20, 2025 @ 6:00pm · add to calendar 2025-02-20 18:00:00 2025-02-20 21:00:00 America/New_York The Power of Diane Oliver's Voice https://charlottecultureguide.com/event/430223/the-power-of-diane-olivers-voice Charlotte Lit, 601 E 5th St, Charlotte, NC, 28202

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