Award-winning author Terry Kay will visit the Nancy Guinn Memorial Library on Thursday, Jan. 24, 7 p.m., for "An Evening with Mr. Terry Kay."

The event will be held in the downstairs meeting room of the library, which is at 864 Green Street.

The program is free and sponsored by the Georgia Council of the Arts, the Georgia Writer's Association, Friends of the Nancy Guinn Library and the Rockdale Genealogical Society.

According to his website, Athens author Terry Kay was named a 2012 Author of the Year by the Georgia Writers Association (GWA) and was also honored in 2011 by the Association with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kay’s “The Greats of Cuttercane” was selected in the Short Story category. It is the fourth time Kay has been honored by the Georgia Writers Association. Previous titles selected for recognition, all in the Novel category, were: “After Eli” (1982), “The Valley of Light” (2004) and “The Book of Marie” (2008).

A celebrated Georgia writer, Kay was induced into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2006. He has also received the Townsend Award, the Lindberg Award, the Appalachian Heritage Award, and in 2009 was selected for the Governor’s Award in the Humanities. Three of his novels – “To Dance with the White Dog,” “The Runaway” and “The Valley of Light” – have been produced as Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. 

 “The Greats of Cuttercane” is a collection of stories about characters from a small north Georgia town known as Cuttercane, and with all having some association with a mystical body of water called Asa’s Spring.

“I’ve always believed Southern literature could be character driven or caricature driven,” Kay explained. “In ‘Cuttercane,’ I deliberately chose to do it as caricature. For me, it was an interesting exercise in style and great fun in discovering the people.”

Kay was also the finalist in the Novel category for his “Bogmeadow’s Wish,” a romance set in Ireland. Both books were published by Mercer University Press.