Lightningstruck: The NOvel
by ashley mace havird

July 21 - august 16, 2016
coolspace @ artspace

Havird’s novel “Lightningstruck” is a coming-of-age story about Etta, a young Southerner whose horse is damaged by a lightning strike. Her experiences growing up during the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s has been published by Mercer University Press for release in the fall. Havird, who lives in Shreveport, grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina.

“This is a work of historical fiction that addresses concerns with social issues and that can open conversations between generations,” said Havird.

“Lightningstruck” is Havird’s first novel.

REVIEW FROM THE CRITIC

"The voice of Etta McDaniel mesmerizes us from the first sentence to the final page of Ashley Mace Havird's novel, Lightningstruck. It is an elegantly crafted coming of age story of a girl on the verge of adolescence. Etta's insights about family, friends, her tiny town and American society in the mid-1960s are beautifully intertwined with her story and that of a mysterious horse that survives a direct hit from lightning. The depth of Etta's tale and its indelible characters makes it a novel for readers of any generation." 

      Robert L. Pincus, former art critic and books editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune

EXHIBITING ARTIST:
Ashley mace havird

ARTIST BIO

I am a poet and novelist who grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina. My debut novel, Lightningstruck, which won the 2015 Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction (Mercer University Press, 2016), is set in Marion County, SC during the height of the tobacco industry in the early 1960s. My fourth collection of poems, Wild Juice, is forthcoming from LSU Press, as the 53rd volume of the Southern Messenger Poetry Series. The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press, 2014) won the 2013 X. J. Kennedy Prize for Poetry. My poems and short stories have appeared in many journals includingShenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry.  Recently appointed Poet Laureate of Caddo Parish, I live in Shreveport, Louisiana, with my husband, the poet David Havird, and our own best dog in the world.

For more of Ashley’s work: https://www.ashleymacehavird.com