Acclaimed mystery author Beverly Connor will be discussing how one’s personal experiences can play into their literary pursuits at the Aug. 4 meeting of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild.
Connor says she will explore “why writers are told to write what they know and why it is only a jumping-off point – and why knowledge is magic.”
The meeting, which will be open to the public, will be held at 7 p.m. at the Laurel Theater, at the corner of Laurel Avenue and 16th Streets (in Fort Sanders). A $2 donation is requested at the door. The building is handicapped accessible.
An Oak Ridge native, Beverly Connor has returned to her hometown after many colorful years in her professional fields of interest. Beverly holds advanced degrees in archaeology, anthropology and geology. Her singular educational background found her working in Georgia and South Carolina as an archaeologist, doing both fieldwork and analyzing artifacts; she long specialized in the Southeastern Indians of the Mississippian period (900-700 AD).
Connor’s love of archaeology has always been great. Somewhere along the way, she became motivated to combine this devotion with another of her longstanding loves – mystery stories. This conjoining immediately assumed a personal tone, as she began weaving her professional experiences as an archaeologist and her knowledge of the South into interlinked, intrigue-filled stories of the past and present.
This was a literary approach that definitely went on to work in Beverly’s favor, evolving into her two successful mystery series, named after their protagonists, Diane Fallon and Lindsay Chamberlain.
Connor’s literary honors have been rooted in her highly-knowledgeable theory that “an archaeologist makes the perfect detective because archaeologists and detectives have the same problem facing them in their jobs – to uncover the true story, working only from biased and incomplete data that’s left behind.”
This concept has been brought to the fore in print by Connor time and again, resulting in captivating tales of murder and intrigue.  
Through the eyes of Beverly Connor, a thoroughly fascinating evening of things personal to an author is promised for the August meeting of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild.

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