Acclaimed American writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote and Carson McCullers established their place in the traditional Southern Gothic canon.
Author Darlyn Finch Kuhn explores the past and contemporary direction of Southern Gothic in her presentation, “Weird Characters, Strange Places, and Tough Times: Writing New Southern Gothic,” at the FWA Ponte Vedra Writers meeting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, at the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library.
In her presentation, Kuhn will discuss how current writers are rediscovering this sub-genre dealing with disenfranchised voices in warped communities, not necessarily set in the American South. She’ll examine several Southern Gothic classics before moving into current examples and allow participating writers to generate their own story ideas.
Kuhn was born and raised in Jacksonville and obtained an AA from FSCJ (when it was Florida Junior College), a BA from Rollins College and an MFA from Spalding University.
She was the 19th writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac Project house in Orlando. Her poetry collections are “Red Wax Rose” (published by Shady Lane Press) and “Three Houses” (published by Scribbles). Her debut novel, “Sewing Holes,” was published by Twisted Road Publications in 2015, and won that year’s Royal Palm Award from the Florida Writers Association.
Since moving back to Jacksonville in 2017, she and husband Brad Kuhn are co-directors of the JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival.
The Ponte Vedra Writers group is part of the Florida Writers Association, a statewide, nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of both aspiring and published writers in any genre. The Sept. 24 meeting is free and open to members and nonmembers alike.
For information on FWA, go to floridawriters.org.
