At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28, Joanna Catherine Scott, winner of the 2008 Randall Jarrell Poetry Award, will read from her recent book "The Road from Chapel Hill" in the Main Reading Room of the Mary Livermore Library at UNC Pembroke.

A reception and book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Scott was born in England and raised in Australia. She earned a graduate degree in philosophy at Duke University and lives in Chapel Hill.

Her most recent novel "The Road From Chapel Hill" is a story of resistance to the Confederacy in Civil War North Carolina. It is a SIBA/Book Sense Southern Literary Bestseller.

"'The Road From Chapel Hill' is one very fine book," says Pat Riviere-Seel of the N.C. Poetry Society. "After reading it I see why it is getting such well deserved attention. Scott is a master storyteller who writes like the poet she is. As a former journalist who always enjoyed the research as much as the writing (if not more than), I'm impressed with her attention to detail. I can hardly wait to read the sequel."

Scott's previous novel "Cassandra Lost" was inspired by the true story of an 18th century elopement. It was called by Booklist "a spellbinding tale."

"The Lucky Gourd Shot", set in South Korea, was a Book Sense Top Ten Titles pick, a Book Sense 76 pick and a nominee for Book Sense Book-of-the-Year. Excerpts won awards from Literal Latt, Georgia State University Review and Crucible.

Scott is also the author of the nonfiction book, "Indochina's Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam" which The Journal of Refugee Studies called "a rare book...of the countless number of books containing interviews with refugees, this is by far the most balanced, best written, and most historically accurate."

Scott doubles as a poet. Most recently her "Night Huntress" is a collection of narrative prose poems inspired by the drunk-driving death of a young friend.

Her previous collection, "Fainting at the Uffizi" won the North Carolina Poetry Society's Brockman-Campbell Award, and "Breakfast at the Shangri-la" won the Black Zinnias Poetry Book Award from the California Institute of Arts and Letters.

Her chapbooks, "Birth Mother" and "Coming Down from Bataan," won the Longleaf Poetry Award and the Acorn-Rukeyser Award, respectively. She has also received the Capricorn Poetry Award for her collection "New Jerusalem," the Americas Review Prize for Social Poetry, the PEN/Nob Hill Poetry Award, The Lyric's New England Prize for Poetry, the Frith Press Ekphrasis Prize, the North Carolina Arts Council's Blumenthal Award, the Rita Dove Poetry Award, the Randall Jarrell Poetry Award and a number of awards from the North Carolina Poetry Society, including its Poet Laureate Award.

Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she has read by invitation at the Library of Congress.

She can be contacted via her Web site www.joannacatherinescott.com.