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Barefoot To Avalon

Critics have called David Payne the most gifted American novelist of his generation. He is best-known for fictional works like “Confessions of A Taoist On Wall Street.”

But in the past decade he has inched farther and farther away from fiction writing and started to take the advice that he gives to his own creative writing students: “write about the hardest material.”Host Frank Stasio talks to David Payne about his brother George, and how his death shaped David’s identity.

His new memoir “Barefoot to Avalon” (Atlantic Monthly Press/2015) tells the story of his younger brother George A. who struggled for years with bi-polar disorder and tragically died after losing control of his vehicle on the interstate.

Host Frank Stasio talks to David Payne about his brother George, and how his death shaped David’s identity.

Payne reads from his book tonight at Purple Crow Books in Hillsborough, on Thursday at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, and at various other bookstores throughout the state over the next two weeks.

David Payne is the author of the new memoir Barefoot to Avalon. Here he is in the late 1970s
David Payne /
David Payne is the author of the new memoir Barefoot to Avalon. Here he is in the late 1970s
Christmas with the Paynes in the mid-1960s
David Payne /
Christmas with the Paynes in the mid-1960s
George A.  Payne (less than a year old) and David Payne (age 4) in 1959.
David Payne /
George A. Payne (less than a year old) and David Payne (age 4) in 1959.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio

Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.