NEA Big Read

As part of the NEA Big Read: Cape Fear, UNCW’s Office of the Arts and UNCW Library are hosting a collaborative, year-long effort to promote literacy in Wilmington and the broader Cape Fear region. Programming for the NEA Big Read: Cape Fear spans three counties and includes community book reads, discussions, family-friendly events, book clubs, teacher trainings, performances, story times, and art festivals that focus their efforts on Andrew Krivaks's The Bear and other companion titles.  

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. The NEA Big Read: Cape Fear is sponsored by the Arts Council of Wilmington & New Hanover County, and the Brunswick Arts Council.

For more information, contact Cara Marsicano (marsicanoc@uncw.edu) 

2023-24 NEA Big Read Featured Title

The Bear by Andrew Krivak  

National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak’s third novel, is a “beautiful and elegant … gem” (Publishers Weekly) that explores a world at the end of humanity.

The last two humans on Earth—a father and daughter—live off the land at the foot of a mountain, learning to live alongside the rhythms of a world reclaimed by nature. Then one day, the girl is alone: left only with the lessons her father taught her and the companionship of the vast wilderness.

"Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson.

Krivak’s descriptions are “so loving and vivid that you can feel the lake water and smell the sea” (Slate). “This tender story is endowed with such fullness of meaning that you have to assign this short, touching book its own category: the post-apocalypse utopia” (Wall Street Journal).

2023-24 NEA Big Read Companion Titles

• A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water by David Gessner
• Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher by Marina Richie 
• The Foxfire Book
• The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich 
• The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
• Pax by Sara Pennypacker 
• Bird Boy by Matthew Burgess 
• The Bear and the Moon by Matthew Burgess
• Poetree by Shauna LaVoy 
• Letters from Bear by Gauthier David
• Bright Star by Yuyi Morales
  

2023-24 NEA Big Read Partners

• Brunswick Arts Council 
• Brunswick County Public Library 
• Cameron Art Museum 
• Cape Fear Audubon  
• Cape Fear Community College Resource Center 
• Cape Fear’s Going Green 
• Cape Fear Literacy Council 
• Cape Fear Museum 
• DC Virgo Preparatory Academy 
• Good Shepherd 
• New Hanover County Public Library 
• New Hanover County Schools 
• Pender County Library 
• Pomegranate Books 
• UNCW Department of Creative Writing 
• UNCW Office of the Arts 
• UNCW UNCW Library 

 Additional Resources

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.  

The National Endowment for the Arts Big Read is designed to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. UNCW is one of 70+ nonprofit organizations to receive a grant to host an NEA Big Read project.  

The NEA Big Read: Cape Fear was made possible by our community sponsors which include the Brunswick Arts Council and the Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County.