Lincoln Kicks Off Book Tour At WC
Christine Lincoln, a 2000 graduate and winner of the College’s Sophie Kerr Prize for literary promise, made good on that promise on September 18, with the release of her newly published book, Sap Rising (Pantheon Books, 2001).
Lincoln returned to the place that helped her cultivate her writing ability, and read two selections from her volume of short stories. It was the first stop on a national tour to promote her book, which has been met with positive reviews. An overflowing crowd of friends and family, fans and well-wishers greeted her warmly with a standing ovation before the reading, and then waited patiently for as long as an hour for the opportunity to chat with the author and to have their books signed. Of course, she remembered everyone.
She thanked Robert Mooney, associate professor of English and director of the O’Neill Literary House, for encouraging her to write. “If it were not for him, I couldn’t have written this book. He talked me into my destiny,” she said.
Her days at Washington College were not easy. An adult student from Baltimore with a young son to raise and little disposable income, Lincoln overcame great obstacles to complete her degree and to follow her dream to become a writer. “We have the ability to create heaven out of hell, or hell out of heaven,” Lincoln remarked during the reading. “Washington College became my heaven. What it gave me was the ability to find my own voice.”
She graduated at the top of her class, and within six months of graduation received a $135,000 advance from Pantheon (a division of Random House) for her collection of short stories—a singular amount for a yet unpublished writer.
Lincoln’s inspiring story of hardship, perseverance and personal, academic and creative accomplishment appeared everywhere, from the pages of The New York Times and the Washington Post to the nationally televised Oprah Winfrey show. Lincoln’s storytelling talent, which developed while listening to her grandmother’s tales at her Lutherville, MD, home, helped her to redeem the vicissitudes of sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, and single motherhood through a unique and powerful literary voice.
Lincoln’s literary debut, Sap Rising, takes readers inside the hearts and minds of African-Americans whose lives unfold against a rural Southern landscape. The characters that inhabit this work are brought to life with a remarkably light touch and an extraordinary depth of insight and emotion. According to Kirkus Reviews, Lincoln’s fiction “delicately and graciously delineates the hardscrabble lives of a series of southern rural characters... The slenderness of the narratives belies their emotional strength, revealing the author’s deep conviction that the writing process itself can redeem the poverty, ignorance, cruelty in her characters’ lives.”
Lincoln visited a dozen cities from Boston to Seattle over the course of two months. At the Chapter 11 Bookstore in Atlanta, Lincoln was surprised to see some Washington College faces. Former College Trustee Dale Adams ’65 was there, as well as J. T. Cunic ’99 and former French professor Valerie Loichot, both of whom are now at Emory University.
“Chris gave a powerful reading,” Adams reported, along with the news that one of Lincoln’s stories, “Like Dove Wings,” will be performed on stage in New York City on February 20, and that she is considering an offer to read her collection to be published as a book on tape.
When her tour concludes, Lincoln plans to return with her son to South Africa, where she is pursuing a doctorate in African literature at the University of Witwaters-rand in Johannesburg, and gathering more stories. She has finished a second book, and plans to begin a third. w
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