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Alum Returns to Coordinate NC Lit Fest

Jason Jefferies promotes the 2014 NC Literary Festival at a radio station.
Jason Jefferies promotes the 2014 NC Literary Festival at a radio station.

Jason Jefferies grew up finding a story anywhere he could. He consumed comic books daily and saw video games as storytelling devices. That led him to study English and literature. He fell in love with the works of authors such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, appreciating the authors as people and reading about their lives.

So it makes complete sense that Jefferies, a former library supervisor at NC State who earned a master’s degree in English in 2008, has a job that’s all about his love of authors.

He’s the programming coordinator for the 2014 N.C. Literary Festival taking place April 3 – 6 at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on NC State’s Centennial Campus.

Jefferies, 33, says his job consists of securing authors, developing the programs, raising money, handling the press and managing volunteers.

And he is most proud of this year’s festival location: the Hunt Library. In fact, when the festival, which rotates between Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central and NC State, was set to come to Raleigh after the 2009 event, organizers postponed it until this year when they knew that the Hunt Library would be open and ready to take center stage.

“The best part of the job is really just coming back to the campus where I received my master’s degree,” says Jefferies. “I’ve been able to work very closely with the creative writing program.”

So how did he decide to bring in literary heavyweights such as Richard Ford and Junot Diaz? You might say Jefferies figured out what was “socially” acceptable. He conducted social media polls and talked to local booksellers.

Lit Fest imageThe choices he made were good ones. The response to the festival has been outstanding and underscores that there are more readers than ever out there.

“Society is more literate,” Jefferies says. “People are reading blogs. And they’re reading and writing more than they were 20 years ago. With the Kindle and other devices, folks are buying books that they normally wouldn’t have.”

By Chris Saunders. This article first appeared in NC State’s alumni association blog, Red and White for Life.

NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of English are proud sponsors of the NC Literary Festival.