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| Wiley Cash | |
Bestselling author Wiley Cash has received the 2020 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Conroy Legacy Award, which recognizes writers "who have achieved a lasting impact on their literary community, demonstrated support for independent bookstores both in their own communities and in general, created written work that focuses significantly on their home place, and supported other writers, especially new and emerging writers." SIBA will make a donation to the Pat Conroy Literary Center and to the UNC Asheville Foundation in Cash's name.
"We are so delighted to see that booksellers have chosen Wiley Cash as their Conroy Legacy Award Recipient,' said Wanda Jewell, SIBA's executive director. "Wiley is a generous southern friend to bookstores and writers."
Cash is the author of A Land More Kind than Home, This Dark Road to Mercy, and The Last Ballad. In addition to his novels, he is the creator of the Open Canon Book Club and a founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency.
"Pat [Conroy] was one of those successful writers who was also pushing others ahead of him," Cash observed. "I've heard story after story from writers whose work he shouldered and shared with the world. He did that for me. We all need to do that for the writers who are coming behind us. He didn't pull the ladder up. He reached a hand down."
He also said: "It's only because the independent bookstores and booksellers embraced my debut that my books have had the success they've had. Indie bookstores put me on the literary map, and they've kept me there. Independent bookstores are the literary, social, cultural, intellectual, and ethical lifeblood of our communities. We go to indie stores to meet authors, discover books, discuss ideas, find community, exchange new ideas and challenge old ones."
Suzanne Lucey, co-owner of Page 158 Books, Wake Forest, N.C., noted that the regard goes both ways: "We had Wiley to our store and for each book sold he donated a dollar from his own pocket to send to the ACLU. Who does that? He also has asked to do a writing class at our store, and applauded a Clay County, N.C. high school teacher for introducing Appalachian writers like Ron Rash and David Joy. He really is trying from the bottom up to make our state and country better."