Catherine Carter

“The book uses this as a metaphor for remembering a time – maybe an imaginary time – when we were more connected, more part of the world,” said Carter, director of WCU’s English education program.

Louisiana State University Press published her book this year and has nominated it for a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. The pages feature poems that Carter has had ready in some forms for years, though many changed over time.

“It’s a lot better than it was 14 years ago,” she said. “It was just a matter of keeping at it.”

Carter says her family has always had a special fascination with words. Her mother was an English teacher and her father a biologist who was a bit of a poet himself. “Dinnertime entertainment frequently involved grabbing the dictionary and checking some etymology,” Carter said.

Another huge influence on her writing was the flat, tidewater landscape where she grew up along the Eastern Shore of Maryland just east of the Chesapeake Bay. Carter will read from her book at the Western’s Spring Literary Festival in March and at locations in Maryland this spring.