The Bandy Heritage Center Commemorates Local Dalton Author's Legacy with 2025 Marian McCamy Sims Summer Author Series

On Thursday, July 17^th at 6:30 p.m., the Bandy Heritage Center will be kicking off a new summer author series to commemorate the legacy of Dalton author Marian McCamy Sims. The 2025 Marian McCamy Sims Summer Author Series features award-winning Georgia authors Mark Warren and Donna Coffey Little. The series will focus on the history and culture of the Cherokees who inhabited the Southern Appalachian region of Northwest Georgia. It is being sponsored by the Bandy Heritage Center for Northwest Georgia, Derrell C. Roberts Library, Appalachian Studies Minor Program at Dalton State College, Prater's Mill Historic Site, and the Trail of Tears Association, TOTA, Georgia Chapter.

The first lecture will be presented by renowned author and primitive arts instructor Mark Warren and is titled " Native American Medicines of the Southeast.” Warren will demonstrate how the diverse flora of the Southeast once provided everything that was needed by the original inhabitants. He will also show how our modern day ignoring of these gifts is what separates us from a life of truly interacting with nature on an intimate level. And how that loss has, no doubt, contributed to our careless handling of the land. The good news is that this trend can be reversed, one person at a time.

The presentation covers plants that may be used for common ailments, ranging from minor cuts, stings, head lice, and rashes to gall stones, dysentery, nausea, and skin cancer. Techniques for field preparations are also included. The lecture will take place on July 17 at 6:30 p.pm. in Room 141 of Derrell C. Roberts Library at Dalton State College.

The second lecture will be presented by Dr. Donna Coffey Little and is titled “Wofford’s Blood: The Odyssey of a Cherokee Family.” The presentation will tell the true story behind her new book, which focuses on the life of James Daugherty Wofford- a mixed-race Cherokee boy who is caught up in the mounting tensions between Cherokee and Anglo-American worlds in early nineteenth century north Georgia. Wofford must come to grip with where his loyalties lie and the challenges of growing up in a society where racial slavery and its cultural consequence have increasingly become an established part of everyday life.

Mark Warren is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Georgia. At Medicine Bow, his nationally renowned wilderness school in the mountains of Dahlonega, GA, he teaches nature classes and primitive survival skills. In 1980, The National Wildlife Federation named him Georgia’s Conservation Educator of the Year. In 1998 Mark became the U.S. National Champion in whitewater canoeing, and in 1999 he won the World Championship Longbow title.

Mark has written extensively about nature for local and national magazines and has researched Western frontier history for more than 50 years presenting at museums and cultural centers around the country. He has 18 traditionally published books. He has been honored by the Spur Awards, The Historical Novel Society, the Will Rogers Medallion Awards, The New Mexico – Arizona Book Awards, and in 2022 Mark was honored with a Georgia Author of the Year Award for his book Song of the Horseman (Literary Fiction Finalist.)

Dr. Donna Coffey Little is a Professor of English at Reinhardt University and founded Reinhardt’s Etowah Valley Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Her historical novel Wofford's Blood was published by Mercer University Press in 2024. It was named Book of the Year by the Southern Literary Review and Best Historical Novel of 2024 by the national Independent Press Association. Her other publications include the poetry chapbook Fire Street as well as creative nonfiction essays, poems and scholarly articles in StorySouth, Tiferet, Georgia Backroads, Calyx, The Atlanta Review, The Florida Review, Women’s Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, and Contemporary Women’s Writing.