Columbus State University’s Carson McCullers Center and the Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts will present a dramatic reading of the war letters exchanged between famous American author and Columbus native Carson McCullers and her husband Reeves McCullers during his combat in Belgium and Germany in 1944-45. This event is in celebration of Carson McCullers’s 102^nd birthday and will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 19, at the Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts Auditorium, located at 1700 Midtown Drive in Columbus.

“These are extraordinarily powerful and poignant letters, coming at a time when Carson and Reeves were separated first by divorce, then by the war,” said Nick Norwood, Director of the Carson McCullers Center. “He fought with great distinction, and Carson was very proud of him, and both are clearly just hoping he can survive the war so that they can renew their marriage and go on with their lives.”

Readings will be performed by Norwood and Suzie Parker Devoe. Norwood, a professor of creative writing at CSU, is a published poet who has won numerous awards. Devoe, a performer, producer, and writer, is currently researching and working on a historical novel.

World-famous writer Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus in 1917 and grew up in the city, graduating from Columbus High School in 1933. She married James Reeves McCullers, a soldier at Ft. Benning, in 1937. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, was published in 1940 when she was 23 years old. She went on to publish several more successful novels including Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding—which she also adapted into a succussful Broadway play—and The Ballad of the Sad Café.

A public outreach unit of Columbus State University, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; to nurturing writers and musicians and educating young people; and to fostering literary, musical, artistic, and intellectual culture in the United States and abroad.