"Where the Crawdads Sing" Book Discussion, Led by Dr. Erin Templeton

In partnership with the Johnson Collection, Hub City Bookshop welcomes Dr. Erin Templeton of Converse University to the Spartanburg County Library Headquarters for a discussion of Delia Owens's novel Where the Crawdads Sing. Just in time for the July 15th release of the Crawdads film adaptation, which will feature paintings by Johnson Collection artist Alice Smith, Dr. Templeton will appear on Thursday, July 14th from 6:30 to 7:30 pm in the Barrett room at the Library to discuss the themes of the book.

Part of a series of programs designed to showcase Alice Smith's work and celebrate Spartanburg's connection to the film through the Johnson Collection, this discussion will be free and open to all. Copies of Crawdads, as well as of Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, a book featuring Smith's artwork, are available for presale and will be available for sale at the event. Reserve your copy at the link!

Reserve My Copy!

About the Book

More than 12 million copies sold worldwide
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
A Business Insider Defining Book of the Decade 

“I can't even express how much I love this book! I didn't want this story to end!”—Reese Witherspoon

“Painfully beautiful.”—The New York Times Book Review

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

About Dr. Erin Templeton

Dr. Templeton is the Dean of the College of Humanities, Sciences, and Business.

She earned her BA and MA from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and she earned her PhD in American Literature and twentieth-century British and Irish literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She enjoys teaching American literature as well as twentieth-century literature in its many forms and varieties. Some of the classes that she has offered include seminars on twentieth-century poetry, F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, the 20th-century American novel, Contemporary American fiction, 20th century Women’s fiction, and the English department senior seminar in literary studies. She has also traveled with students to Costa Rica, Cuba, England, France, and Ireland.

Professor Templeton’s research interests include transatlantic modernism, the intersections of authorship and gender in early twentieth-century literature, and textual studies. She recently wrote the edition to the Handheld Press edition of Zelda Fitzgerald’s novel Save Me the Waltz and contributed an essay to the Modernism/modernity PrintPlus cluster “Reading The Waste Land with the #MeToo Generation. She has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to William Carlos Williams and has published essays on the gender dynamics of authorial collaboration in Williams’s long poem “Paterson” as well as on Ezra Pound’s relationship with early twentieth-century pianist and composer, George Antheil. She is a former contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s column “Profhacker” and has contributed numerous essays to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism on figures such as T. S. Eliot, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound.

In her spare time, Dr. Templeton is a crime fiction junkie who enjoys running, walking her dog, and cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

About the Artwork

Paintings by South Carolina artist Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (1876–1958) from the Johnson Collection will be shown in the major motion picture, Where the Crawdads Sing—the film adaptation of the New York Times best-selling book of the same name by Delia Owens. Opening July 15, 2022, Crawdads will include images of Alice Smith’s watercolors of the Carolina Lowcountry. The film’s director, Olivia Newman, sought inspiration from Smith’s art to “capture [the main character’s] world, the marsh and swamps….We looked at paintings, we looked at photography, and we drew from all of the mediums.” Find out more about Alice on The Johnson Collection's website.

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith's luminous paintings reflect a body of work characterized by her experimentations in various mediums and mastery of watercolors. Smith is best remembered for her scenic views of Charleston and the surrounding wilds of the Carolina Lowcountry on display in Nature I Loved: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and the Carolina Lowcountry from July 13–September 24, 2022 at TJC Gallery. The Johnson Collection's downtown Spartanburg gallery is open Wednesday–Saturday, 12–4pm and is always free to visitors. 

About the Johnson Collection 

Located in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Johnson Collection has been hailed for having staged a “quiet art historical revolution” and expanding “the meaning of regional” through its “exhibitions, loans, publications, and institutional partnerships.” What began as an interest in paintings by Carolina artists in 2002 has grown to encompass 1,200 objects with provenances that span the centuries and chronicle the cultural evolution of the American South. Since 2012, TJC has produced four significant scholarly books, including its 2018 volume, Central to Their Lives: Women Artists in the Johnson Collection, which featured artwork by Alice Smith in its pages as well as its traveling companion exhibition.