PRESS RELEASE FROM ASHEVILLE LYRIC OPERA:
Join us for a very special opera talk as Author Davis Miller joins ALO Artistic Director David Craig Starkey to hold a discussion about Miller’s book Approaching Ali. Approaching Ali, a retelling of Miller’s experiences with the late Muhammad Ali after befriending him, is often lauded as one of the best pieces of sports journalism and is the most intimate look at Ali’s life after boxing.
Our speakers will hold a talk about this international best seller and how the book has become an opera. They will also speak about how the impact of Ali’s passing has prompted Miller and Starkey to begin developing a project to present the work in multiple cities in the South.
About Davis Miller
Davis Miller is the author of the new international bestseller, Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts (W. W. Norton/Liveright), as well as the number-one international bestseller, The Tao of Muhammad Ali: A Fathers and Sons Memoir and the number-three international bestseller, Tao of Bruce Lee: My Martial Arts Memoir.
David Halberstam and Glenn Stout judged Miller’s story “My Dinner with Ali” one of the best American sports stories of the twentieth century. His acclaimed fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, Men’s Journal, GQ, Sports Illustrated, and Rolling Stone, and in magazines published by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Louisville Courier-Journal, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, (London) Telegraph, (New York) Newsday, Louisville Courier-Journal, and numerous other publications. His Muhammad Ali stories have been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, The Best American Sports Writing 1994, The Muhammad Ali Reader, and The Beholder’s Eye: America’s Finest Personal Journalism, among several others. He is the co-librettist of the acclaimed Washington National Opera commissioned chamber opera, “Approaching Ali,” that is based on his transformed-by-Ali stories. Miller is presently the co-curator of the major London exhibition, “I Am the Greatest: Muhammad Ali at the O2,” and he is helping spearhead a movement for Ali to receive an honorary posthumous knighthood from the government of the United Kingdom. In addition, he is at work on a harrowing yet comic memoir about having been recently kidnapped in China and on an obsessive modern love novel.
Miller was born in Winston- Salem, North Carolina, where much of his writing takes place. He lives with his wife and two sons (the younger of whom is named after Muhammad Ali) in a small wood near Asheville, North Carolina.
“Opera Talk” Schedule of Events
ALO is excited to present the latest round of our lecture series at the UNCA Reuter Center.
Friday, August 12, 3:00 – 5:00PM
Approaching Ali: From Page to StageFriday, September 9, 1:00 – 2:30PM
Live Radio Show with Jeff MesserFriday, September 30, 3:00 – 5:00PM
Opera ShowcaseFriday, October 28, 3:00 – 5:00PM
The Opera Casting Process
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