Keynote Addresses

Join us for two exciting keynote addresses at this year’s festival with Charles Frazier, bestselling author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons—along with Myrtle Driver Johnson, who translated the text into the Cherokee language—and Kinky Friedman, author, singer/songwriter, politician, raconteur, and iconoclast.

Charles Frazier is the author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons. He grew up in Andrews, NC. He won the National Book Award for Cold Mountain, as well as the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Abby Award from Independent Booksellers, among many others, and was on the New York Times bestseller list for well over a year. Thirteen Moons was an instant bestseller, and spent many weeks on various national bestseller lists in hardcover.

Myrtle Driver Johnson made history when she translated Thirteen Moons: Removal (Tsogadu Nvdo:Tsigegvwovdisgei) into the Cherokee language. It is the first work of literature in English to be translated into the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian dialect, or any Native American language for that matter. The last translations were 175 years ago when the Cherokee published a bilingual newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix and some portions of the Bible and hymns were translated.

Recently, she has traveled with Charles Frazier to Raleigh, Washington, DC, and Kansas City, as well as Cherokee, NC to do bilingual readings from Thirteen Moons and to discuss the translation project and language preservation efforts.

Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and former columnist for Texas Monthly. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas.