News & Such

Book Launch Party & Documentary Film Premiere at Ciné - WED 11/16 - FREE

The University of Georgia Press presents a book launch party for southern author and naturalist John Lane's My Paddle to The Sea: Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas, a journey through South Carolina's Santee River watershed, and the premiere of the short film RIVER TIME by Chris Cogan and Tom Byars which documents the experience. Followed by a Q&A with the author and the filmmakers.

Both the book and film depict Lane's epic canoe journey from his backyard creek in Spartanburg, South Carolina to the Atlantic Ocean. During the three hundred mile, 11-day trip, Lane recounts local history and spars with streamside literary presences such as Mind of the South author W. J. Cash; Henry Savage, author of the Rivers of America Series volume on the Santee; novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Peterkin; early explorer John Lawson; and poet and outdoor writer Archibald Rutledge.

Lane ponders the sites of old cotton mills; abandoned locks, canals, and bridges; ghost towns fallen into decay a century before; Indian mounds; American Revolutionary and Civil War battle sites; nuclear power plants; and boat landings, and encounters perplexed fishermen, catfish clean­ers, river rats, and a trio of drug-addled drifters on a lonely boat dock a day's paddle from the sea.

Along his travels Lane encounters the history and nature of undiscovered areas of South Carolina; embarking upon ancient Indian artifacts and native flora and fauna as well as the reality of man's impact on the environment - navigating through unexpected garbage piles and other pollutants.

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