By SUSAN BROILI

Special to The Herald-Sun

Allan Gurganus may live in present-day Hillsborough but these days he also time travels to another small North Carolina town.

His travels begin in the late 19th century and span 100 years in the life of a Baptist church in that town. What he discovers informs his novel-in-progress, “The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church.” It’s the second novel — “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” being the first — in his Falls Trilogy set in the fictitious town of Falls, N.C., based in large part on the eastern North Carolina town of Rocky Mount where he grew up.

“My lawyer told me not to call it Rocky Mount,” Gurganus, 62, said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Hillsborough’s historic district.

On the nature of fiction, Gurganus quotes one of his mentors, John Cheever, who said, “Fiction is a force of memory imperfectly understood.”

Gurganus will, no doubt, talk about Cheever when he and Elizabeth Spencer appear at the North Carolina Literary Festival’s “Influences and Inspirations” session at 12:20 p.m. Sunday in Hamilton Hall. The free festival begins Thursday and continues through Sept. 13 at UNC Chapel Hill.

On Saturday at 12:20 p.m. in Hamilton Hall at “Old Friends, New Books,” he’ll interview Erica Eisdorfer (“The Wet Nurse’s Tale”) and Wells Tower (“Everything Ravished, Everything Burned”). “Both books have given me a huge amount of pleasure,” Gurganus said.

Also on Saturday, Gurganus joins writers Doris Betts, Daniel Wallace and John Rowell for the “From Books to Movies, Plays and Musicals” session at 3:50 p.m in Carroll Hall. Gurganus’ first novel, “The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All,” became a CBS play that won four Emmy Awards. In 2003, Ellen Burstyn starred in a one-woman Broadway play based on the novel. The CBS version of “Widow” won four Emmys.

The writer said he did not yet know if the new novel will be as long as the 800-page “Widow.” He’s been working on the novel off and on for about 20 years, he added. In it, he tells the 100-year history of the church through its preachers including the blind son of Col. William and Lucy Marsden from “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” he added.

He’s drawing from sermons in the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC and, of course, from his childhood in Rocky Mount, population 24,000 at that time.

“Growing up in a single town gives you the paint box,” he said. Hues of race, class and basic human behavior from best to worst color this community portrait. “During a crisis, doors fling open and the whole community comes in with a casserole,” he said. “There’s a Greek chorus waiting to sympathize or condemn. Exceptions are made. Not every girl in trouble is banished.”

When contacted, Gurganus was working on a section in which a female choir director runs off with a visiting male singer. He writes six days a week, rising at 6 a.m. and takes a 30- to 40-minute walk, then stops by the post office before sitting down to write. He usually writes until 3 p.m. but does take breaks to work in his garden. He said he doesn’t work from a plot because he finds it more interesting and true to life to be surprised by what happens. “I do what a mud-dauber wasp does. I just chew the mud and make a form,” he said.

He started out as a painter until a three-year stint in the Navy found him on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War.

“There was no easel or painting studio,” he said. But the vessel that carried 4,000 men did have a library and out of boredom he began reading. “That’s how writers are born,” he said. As he read work by Charles Dickens, George Elliott, Henry James and others, he began writing in the style of each and taught himself to write that way — just as he had imitated the work of great painters in his training as an artist, he said. “Influence is a good thing,” he said.

As for writing advice to others, he cited active verbs as important for lively stories. “The most useful is to read your work aloud a lot. Writing is a musical composition as well as a conveyance of information,” he said.

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Appearances

Hillsborough writer Allan Gurganus makes three appearances at the free North Carolina Literary Festival that begins Thursday and continues through Sept. 13 at UNC in Chapel Hill.

“Old Friends, New Books” (Saturday, 12:20 p.m. at Hamilton Hall) — Gurganus interviews Erica Disdorfer (“The Wet Nurse’s Tale”) and Wells Tower (“Everything Ravished, Everything Burned”).

“From Books to Movies, Plays and Musicals” (Saturday, 3:50 p.m. in Carroll Hall) — Gurganus joins Doris Betts, Daniel Wallace and John Rowell.

“Influences and Inspirations” (Sunday, 12:20 p.m. in Hamilton Hall) — Gurganus joins Elizabeth Spencer.

For a complete schedule, visit www.ncliteraryfestival.org