The Bandy Heritage Center at Dalton State College will host the 2026 Marian McCamy Sims Summer Author Series in July and August. With a focus on the history and culture of the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the Southern Appalachian region of northwest Georgia, the series will feature the return of award-winning Georgia authors Mark Warren and Donna Coffey Little.
On July 23, Warren, an author and primitive arts instructor, will highlight traditional skills and knowledge passed down through generations in “The Forest’s Gifts of Food, Medicine and Craft as Practiced by Native Americans.” He will demonstrate how Indigenous peoples of the Southeast used native plants for food, medicine, insect repellent, crafts and fire-making. The presentation will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Room 141 of the Derrell C. Roberts Library.
Warren, an author and primitive arts instructor, will highlight traditional skills and knowledge passed down through generations in “The Forest’s Gifts of Food, Medicine and Craft as Practiced by Native Americans.” He will demonstrate how Indigenous peoples of the Southeast used native plants for food, medicine, insect repellent, crafts and fire-making.
Proprietor of the Medicine Bow wilderness school in Dahlonega, Georgia, Warren has written extensively about nature for local and national publications and has researched Western frontier history for more than 50 years, presenting at museums and cultural centers across the country. The author of 18 traditionally published books, he has received honors from the Spur Awards, the Historical Novel Society, the Will Rogers Medallion Awards, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. In 2022, he received a Georgia Author of the Year Award for Song of the Horseman, a literary fiction finalist.
On August 13, Little, a professor of English at Reinhardt University, will present the second lecture, “Wofford’s Blood: The Odyssey of a Cherokee Family,” at 6:30 p.m. at the Roberts Library. The presentation will explore the true story behind Little’s 2024 novel Wofford’s Blood, which was named Book of the Year by the Southern Literary Review and Best Historical Novel of 2024 by the Independent Press Award program. The book features the life of James Daugherty Wofford, a mixed-race Cherokee boy caught between Cherokee and Anglo-American cultures in early 19th-century north Georgia. As tensions rise between the two societies, Wofford must confront questions of identity, loyalty and the growing influence of racial slavery on everyday life.American cultures in early 19th-century north Georgia. As tensions rise between the two societies, Wofford must confront questions of identity, loyalty and the growing influence of racial slavery on everyday life.
Little is founder of Reinhardt’s Etowah Valley Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Her other publications include the poetry chapbook Fire Street as well as creative nonfiction essays, poems and scholarly articles published in StorySouth, Tiferet, Georgia Backroads, Calyx, The Atlanta Review, The Florida Review, Women’s Studies, Modern Fiction Studies and Contemporary Women’s Writing.
Sponsors of the lecture series include the Derrell C. Roberts Library, Dalton State’s Appalachian Studies Minor Program, the Prater’s Mill Foundation and the Georgia Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association.
For information about the lecture series and other upcoming events, visit www.bandyheritagecenter.org or call 706-272-4452.
