Spring 2008 PDF - University of South Carolina Upstate

Freedom, Civil Rights, Vietnam and Drugs:
Tilt 68 Author Explores Issues of the ‘60s
BY TAMMY E. WHALEY
Sarah Colton, author of Tilt 68, shares some of her challenges as a writer with
Professor of English Dr. Thomas McConnell.
From Vietnam to The Pill, from fraternity parties to
Existentialism, the novel Tilt 68 brings the late 1960s to life
through the profound changes experienced by one Southern
woman who dares to look at her own life with open eyes.
Sarah Colton, author of Tilt 68, shared her stories with the
USC Upstate campus this Spring when she spoke to several
classes and gave an author lecture.
“USC Upstate students don’t often have the opportunity to
meet a living writer in the flesh, so it was a great delight for
them to have one on campus,” said Dr. Thomas McConnell,
associate professor of English. “The chance to pitch your
questions to someone who’s already been through and
conquered the challenges you’re facing as a young writer is
a real privilege. Luckily, we had the benefit of Sarah Colton’s
wisdom.”
Colton says she always knew she would write a novel.
Following her graduation from UNC Chapel Hill in 1971, she
worked as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill for one year
before cashing in all her savings, and moving to Europe with
nothing but a small canvas suitcase stuffed with dreams of
adventure. What she didn’t realize was that the novel would
be 20 years in the making.
“I began writing a series of essays centered around a
burning question which had troubled me for more than two
decades: ‘What happened to me during my first two years of
college (the years 1967 to 1969)’ Somehow, it seems that
I had entered them as one person and emerged as someone
fundamentally different. So did most of my friends. What
happened to us How could we and an entire society have
changed so drastically in such a short time” asked Colton.
Tilt 68 is a novel grounded in the energy and icons of the
1960s and tells the story of Louisa Ellington, an 18-year old
freshman at a Southern women’s college. Louisa is a coed
when the sudden and widespread availability of The Pill
thrusts unprecedented freedom on an entire generation of
women—all within the context of the Civil Rights movement,
the Vietnam War and the arrival of drugs on campus.
“Tilt 68 will speak to any reader who has ever challenged
authority and wrestled with the conflicting doubts and
convictions unleashed by power shifts along the elemental
fault-lines of life: sex, politics, race, religion and war,” said
Colton.
A native of North Carolina, Colton now divides her time
between Asheville and Paris. Although Tilt 68 is Colton’s first
novel, her articles and fiction have appeared in publications
such as Glamour and Redbook and the short-story anthology
They Only Laughed Later.
14 University Review