Greensboro Bound

Poems in a Crisis with Traci Brimhall, Nickole Brown, and Alice Quinn
2021-05-15 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | VIRTUAL
Poems in a Crisis: Navigating Family, the Pandemic, and Remaking the World.
Join poets TRACI BRIMHALL and NICKOLE BROWN and editor ALICE QUINN in a soulful discussion of navigating family, the pandemic and remaking the world through poetry. What does it mean to reckon with our ill treatment of animals? What does it mean to write lullabies after the death of one’s mother, the murder of a friend, and the end of a marriage? What is it to bear witness to a pandemic that killed more than half a million people in the United States and millions around the world? Host KATIE KEHOE delves into these questions and more. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
TRACI BRIMHALL is the author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon, 2020); Saudade (Copper Canyon, 2017), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, and Best American Poetry. A 2013 NEA Fellow, she’s currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University.
Authors Website
NICKOLE BROWN received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. She’s the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. The audiobook of that collection became available in 2017. Currently, she teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA. She lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, NC, where she periodically volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. A chapbook called To Those Who Were Our First Gods won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and a long sequence called The Donkey Elegies was published as a chapbook by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020.
Author Website
ALICE QUINN was the executive director of the Poetry Society of America for eighteen years, the poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007, and an editor at Knopf for more than ten years prior to that. She teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and is the editor of a book of Elizabeth Bishop’s writings, Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, as well as a forthcoming book of Bishop’s journals. She lives in New York City and Millerton, New York.
KATIE KEHOE’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salt Hill, Boudin–the online home of the McNeese Review, The Indianapolis Review, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the NC State poetry contest (2019), and nominated for a Pushcart (2020). She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and currently she works as a librarian.

Allan Gurganus & George Singleton
2021-05-15 16:00 - 17:00 | VIRTUAL
Watch moderator (referee?) DREW PERRY as he survives the interests and eccentricities of two of the Carolinas’ best short story writers, ALLAN GURGANUS and GEORGE SINGLETON. Born in Rocky Mount, NC, Allan Gurganus has written four novels (including the bestselling The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All) and four short story collections and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Paris Review and everywhere good literature is read. George Singleton was raised in Greenwood, SC and has an MFA in fiction from UNC Greensboro. He is the author of two novels and nine short story collections, including the recent You Want More. With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.

ALLAN GURGANUS is a trained painter, author, and eloquent critic of homophobia, racism and much American foreign policy. He first turned to writing onboard the USS Yorktown during the Vietnam War and subsequently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. He is an alum of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he was mentored by Stanley Elkin and John Cheever. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Adaptations of his fiction have won four Emmys.
Author Website

GEORGE SINGLETON was raised in Greenwood, South Carolina. He has published nine collections of stories, two novels, and (with Daniel Wallace) a book of advice. In a 2006 interview Singleton recalled his beginnings as a writer and his slow but sure path to national prominence as a southern writer: “I plowed on until I found a voice, and understood that I would try to write about how the saddest moments can be the funniest.” He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
DREW PERRY teaches writing at Elon University and writes a monthly column for Our State magazine. His novels include, This Is Just Exactly Like You, a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan prize from the Center for Fiction, a Best-of-the-Year pick from The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and a SIBA Okra pick, and Kids These Days. He lives with his wife and two sons.

This event is sponsored by:

Issac Bailey & Bakari Sellers
2021-05-15 15:00 - 16:00 | VIRTUAL
Essayist ISSAC BAILEY author of Why Didn’t We Riot: A Black Man in Trumpland, and CNN commentator BAKARI SELLERS, author of My Vanishing Country, review the life of African Americans in post-Trump America and in the South. They address traumas that shaped their lives: Dylan Roof and Mother Emmanuel AME, African American accommodation of whites, the myths and truths that made Donald Trump president, reparations, and the changes we must make to end 400+ years of systemic racism. Hosted by STEPHEN COLYER. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
BAKARI SELLERS is a CNN political analyst and was the youngest-ever member of the South Carolina state legislature. Recently named to TIME’s “40 Under 40” List, he is also a practicing attorney fighting to give a voice for the voiceless.
Author Website

ISSAC BAILEY is a veteran journalist who has won numerous writing and reporting awards and has conducted investigations that led to changes in the way the S.C. Department of Social Services handles child protection cases. He is also a certified guardian ad litem and has served as the legal representative in Family Court for children in distress and has spent several years mentoring troubled youth in a variety of capacities. Bailey is Davidson College’s Batten Professor and taught journalism and applied ethics at Coastal Carolina University for several years. He is married to Dr. Tracy Bailey, founder and executive director of non-profit literacy organization, Freedom Readers, and has two teenaged children. Bailey’s 2018 book, My Brother Moochie, which discusses the effects of the criminal justice system on black families, has received critical acclaim and has been featured in the New York Times.
Author Website

STEPHEN COLYER is the Greensboro Literary Organization Board Treasurer and one of the founders of Greensboro Bound. He has been thrilled to see an idea crystallize, grow and become a valued part of our community’s arts ecosystem. His interest in book fairs/literary festivals stemmed from a 21 year sojourn in Miami where he attended and then volunteered with Miami Book Fair, the largest literary festival in the United States. He lives in Jamestown, NC with his wife Sandra and their dog, Missy.

LIVE All Up In Your Feels, a poetry workshop
2021-05-15 14:00 - 15:30 | LIVE ZOOM
Join poets and partners JESSICA JACOBS and NICKOLE BROWN in a poetry workshop to get “All Up In Your Feels.”
For all you lonely hearts, flaming hearts, celebrators (or detesters) of Valentine’s Day, this generative workshop focuses on the difficult art of writing about love. We’ll draw inspiration from poems by Traci Brimhall and Dorianne Laux before turning your own hand to the page to write of eros but free from its sappy, chocolate-dipped clichés—or conversely, to write about heartbreak or downright lack of love with nuance and grace. Open to writers of all levels, this session is a solid choice for anyone wanting to write about love in any genre, and we hope that you’ll leave with some strategies that will help you address one of the heart’s most pervasive conundrums. There will be opportunities to write (and possibly share your newfound lines) during our time together, so come ready and willing to play. Authors’ Website

Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
JESSICA JACOBS is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year and winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award and Goldie Award. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal, Jessica lives in Asheville, NC, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/PenguinRandomHouse), and is at work on a collection of poems exploring spirituality, Torah, and Midrash.
Author Website
NICKOLE BROWN received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. She’s the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. The audiobook of that collection became available in 2017. Currently, she teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA. She lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, NC, where she periodically volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. A chapbook called To Those Who Were Our First Gods won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and a long sequence called The Donkey Elegies was published as a chapbook by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020.
Author Website

Poems In Crisis, poetry panel with Tracy Brimhall, Nickole Brown, and Alice Quinn

Read Romance, Fight Patriarchy!
2021-05-15 14:00 - 15:00 | VIRTUAL
Read Romance, Fight Patriarchy! Host SARAH COLONNA frames the conversation thusly with romance Authors KIANNA ALEXANDER, ROSIE DANAN, JOANNA LOWELL, and ALISHA RAI. Our authors unpack the ways in which modern romance writers are reshaping what it means to write romance novels by crafting stories that are more reflective of the reality of “romance” and more inclusive of love in all its varied shapes and forms. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
KIANNA ALEXANDER, like any good Southern belle, wears many hats: doting mama, advice-dispensing sister, fun aunt and gabbing girlfriend. She’s a voracious reader, an amateur seamstress and occasional painter in oils.
Author Website
ROSIE DANAN writes steamy, big-hearted books, articles, and tweets about the trials and triumphs of modern love. The New York Times called her debut novel, The Roommate, “a book about people expanding into their best possible selves…warmly funny and gorgeously sexy” has been optioned for film, and a companion book The Intimacy Experiment was released this April. When not writing, Rosie enjoys jogging slowly to fast music, petting other people’s dogs, and competing against herself in rounds of Chopped using the miscellaneous ingredients occupying her fridge.
Author Website
JOANNA LOWELL lives among the fig trees in North Carolina, where she teaches in the English department at Wake Forest University. When she’s not writing historical romance, she writes collections and novels as Joanna Ruocco. Those books include Dan, Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith, The Week, and Field Glass, co-authored with Joanna Howard.
Author Website

ALISHA RAI writes award-winning emotionally complex contemporary romance novels and is frequently sought as a speaker on a range of topics covering romance and media. She is the first author to have an indie-published book appear on Washington Post’s annual Best Books list. When she’s not writing, Alisha is traveling, tweeting or tiktoking.
Author Website
SARAH COLONNA is the Associate Faculty Chair of Grogan College at UNC Greensboro. She has an interdisciplinary background with degrees in Education, Women’s and Gender Studies, and nursing. Her research interests include teaching creatively and imaginatively using Young Adult Literature, narrative, and storytelling. She is a life-long reader who added herself to her grandmother’s romance book circle as a teen and hasn’t stopped reading since.

Speculative Fiction with Rivers Solomon & KM Szpara
2021-05-15 13:00 - 14:00 | VIRTUAL
In their new novel, Sorrowland, RIVERS SOLOMON introduces us to Vern, a pregnant woman on the run from the mysterious compound where she was raised. As she seeks shelter in the woods, she begins to change. KM SZPARA’s new novel, First, Become Ashes, follows Lark, raised since childhood to fight and kill monsters before the FBI arrives to tell him it’s all fake. As the best of speculative fiction does, these novels force their protagonists to question what’s real in their lives and shine a light for readers on our society’s darker realities. Join host JASON HERNDON as he discusses the speculative fiction genre, these stories, and the truths conjured and revealed by these tales. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
RIVERS SOLOMON writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. Solomon’s debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts appeared on the Stonewall Honor List and won a Firecracker Award. Solomon’s second book, The Deep, based on the Hugo-nominated song by the Daveed Diggs-fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award. A refugee of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.
Authors Website
KM SZPARA is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with his tiny dog and goofy cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as First, Become Ashes, Docile, and a third in 2022 that follows up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time. They’re about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in venues such as Tor.com, Uncanny, and Lightspeed.
Author Website
JASON HERNDON is an author of speculative fiction and poetry. All his characters are Black unless otherwise noted. A psychologist by training, he is fascinated by people, families, and their relationships. His work appears in Star*Line Magazine and Inkwell Black. Originally from Texas, he now resides in Greensboro, NC with his wife and dog.

Love, Justice, and Healing with Sharon Salzberg & Omid Safi
2021-05-15 12:00 - 13:00 | VIRTUAL
Join us in a discussion on love, justice, and healing with SHARON SALZBERG and OMID SAFI. Host MOLLY SENTELL HAILE will explore how ideas of radical love and loving kindness relate to our personal lives, pandemic living, and social change. Sharon Salzberg is a central figure in the field of meditation and a world-renowned teacher and author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestseller Real Happiness and, most recently, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World. Omid Safi, translator and editor of Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition, is a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University and leads Illuminated Tours interfaith journeys. Both Safi and Salzberg have been columnists for On Being, a website and public radio program that explores what it is to be human and how we want to live.[rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
SHARON SALZBERG is a meditation pioneer and industry leader, a world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. As one of the first to bring meditation and mindfulness into mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, her relatable, demystifying approach has inspired generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, her seminal work, Lovingkindness, and her newest book, Real Change: Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves and the World. Sharon’s secular, modern approach to Buddhist teachings is sought after at schools, conferences, and retreat centers worldwide. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has amassed over 3 million downloads and features interviews with the top leaders and thinkers of the mindfulness movement and beyond. Sharon’s writing can be found on Medium, On Being, the Maria Shriver blog, and Huffington Post.
Author Website
OMID SAFI is a teacher in the Sufi tradition of Radical Love. He is a professor at Duke University specializing in Islamic spirituality and contemporary thought. Omid has published extensively on the foundational sources of Islam and Sufism. His Memories of Muhammad is a biography of the Prophet Muhammad. His most recent book is Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (published by Yale). He has been invited by the family of Dr. King to speak at Ebenezer Church on the relevance of Dr. King for today’s America, and has delivered the Martin Luther King keynote in the annual national MLK service. His Illuminated Tours have taken more than a 1,000 friends from over twenty countries to Turkey and Morocco since 2002, and he is now offering Illuminated Courses for online offerings on spiritual traditions open to seekers of all backgrounds.
Author Website
MOLLY SENTELL HAILE’s short stories and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in Oxford American, The North Carolina Literary Review, O. Henry Magazine, Jabberwock Review, and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2020 Doris Betts Fiction Prize, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s MFA in Creative Writing, she currently teaches creative writing classes for people with cancer, survivors, and caregivers at Hirsch Wellness Network in Greensboro and is at work her first novel.

This presentation is sponsored by

Hidden Histories with Lisa Levenstein & Shanna Greene Benjamin
2021-05-15 11:00 - 12:00 | VIRTUAL
Join the discussion with SHANNA GREENE BENJAMIN and LISA LEVENSTEIN about memory, the public persona and the private individual, the biographer/historian’s relationship to her subject(s), and the intersectionality of sexism, racism, and economic inequality. Benjamin’s Half in Shadow gives a full and surprising picture of the life of Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006), an American literary scholar best known for her collaboration with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. McKay, a Black working-class woman, kept much of her private life in secret, creating a public persona as one of many strategies she used to navigate the primarily white male American academy while simultaneously lifting up Black scholarly and literary voices in the academy. Levenstein’s They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties takes a closer look at a time when many (including the cover of Time magazine) declared feminism dead. Instead, Levenstein uncovers a vital (and overlooked) transition period when multiracial and grassroots organizers across the globe (re)shaped the women’s movement. Hosted by ANN CAHILL. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book images above.
DR. SHANNA GREENE BENJAMIN is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. Dr. Benjamin earned her Ph.D. in English and M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; she received a B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University—a historically Black college in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is also a Mellon Mays undergraduate fellow who now serves on the UNCF/Mellon Board of Advisors. Dr. Benjamin currently lives with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Authors Website
DR. LISA LEVENSTEIN is Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at UNC Greensboro. Her first book, A Movement Without Marches, won the Kenneth Jackson Book Award. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC.
Author Website
DR. ANN CAHILL is a professor of philosophy at Elon University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of feminist theory and philosophy of the body, and her scholarship has addressed topics such as sexual assault, miscarriage, beautification, and sex work. Her forthcoming book, Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice, co-authored with Christine Hamel, explores the social, political, and ethical meanings of voice as human-generated sound.
This event is sponsored by

Our Stories, Our Voices: Four Years On
2021-05-15 10:00 - 11:00 | VIRTUAL
Join Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America editor AMY REED and contributors TRACY DEONN, AMBER SMITH, and IW GREGORIO as they look back on their contribution to Our Stories, Our Voices. We’ll take a closer look at how their perspectives have changed over the past four years and what they might say now if they were to write their essays all over again; and how and why their writing has changed since Our Stories, Our Voices was first published in 2018.
Sunday, 5/16 – Part 2 – Our Stories, Our Voices: Writing As Activism
Sunday, 5/16 – Your Story, Your Voice: A Writing Workshop

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AMY REED is the award-winning author of several novels for young adults, including The Nowhere Girls, The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World, Beautiful, Clean, and Crazy. Her newest book, the psychological thriller Tell Me My Name, is a near-future, gender-swapped retelling of The Great Gatsby. Amy is a feminist, mother, and Virgo who enjoys running, making lists, and wandering around the mountains of western North Carolina where she lives.
Author Website
TRACY DEONN is the New York Times bestselling author of Legendborn and a second-generation fangirl who grew up in North Carolina. Tracy has worked in live theater, video games, and K–12 education. When she’s not writing, Tracy speaks on panels at SFF conventions, reads fanfic, and keeps an eye out for ginger-flavored everything.
Author Website
AMBER SMITH is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult novels The Way I Used to Be, The Last to Let Go, and Something Like Gravity. An advocate for increased awareness of gendered violence, as well as LGBTQ equality, she writes in the hope that her books can help to foster change and spark dialogue surrounding these issues. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her wife and their ever-growing family of rescued dogs and cats.
Author Website
IW GREGORIO is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. She is author of This is My Brain in Love, which was awarded the 2020 Schneider Family Book Award by the American Library Association. After getting her MD, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above, which was a Lambda Literary Finalist, a Publishers Weekly Flying Start, and an ALA Rainbow List selection. She is proud to be a board member of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Her essays have been published in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Scientific American, among others.
Author Website

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LIVE An Evening with Nnedi Okorafor
2021-05-14 19:00 - 20:00 | LIVE ZOOM
NNEDI OKORAFOR is a Nigerian-American author of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism for children and adults. Her works include Who Fears Death, the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, “Akata”, “Lagoon” and “Ikenga”, and her latest novel, Remote Control. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel, Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. She has also written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther: Long Live the King, Wakanda Forever, the “Shuri” series and an Africanfuturist comic series Laguardia, as well as a short memoir, Broken Places and Outer Spaces. Additionally, she has co-written the adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with Viola Davis and Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu. Nnedi holds a PhD in literature and two master’s degrees in journalism and literature. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Illinois. Hosted by DR. TARA GREEN, UNCG Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and the Linda Arnold Carlisle Excellence Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. [rsvp & registration required; see below]
Author Website
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.

This event is made possible by the UNCG University Libraries.

Chefs Ricky Moore & Whitney Otawka
2021-05-14 18:00 - 19:00 | VIRTUAL
We’ll talk the craft of food with award winning chef and author WHITNEY OTAWKA as she shares her journey from the Mojave Desert in California to Cumberland Island, Georgia with stops along the way in Michelin starred kitchens and a season of Top Chef, and RICKY MOORE, who after a stint in the military attended the Culinary Institute of America, also worked in Michelin starred restaurants around the world, and competed in Iron Chef before deciding to return home to North Carolina to open his own seafood joint. Host DABNEY SANDERS chats with our chefs about seafood, a sense of place, family, and of course you won’t want to miss the discussion of Ben’s biscuits and the almighty pork chop. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
WHITNEY OTAWKA is a chef, writer, and author of The Saltwater Table: Recipes from the Coastal South. With more than 125 recipes, The Saltwater Table is a reflection of the cuisine Whitney has explored through her travels along the Coastal South and time as Executive Chef at Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island. The cookbook reflects a modern perspective on southern flavors with a strong emphasis on vegetables and fresh ingredients. Her recipes have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Garden & Gun, and Culture. She is currently overseeing the restaurant development of the soon to be open Thompson Hotel in Savannah (Summer 2021).
Chef Website
RICKY MOORE is a self-professed evangelist of North Carolina seafood and owner of the popular Saltbox Seafood Joint restaurants in Durham, North Carolina. Taking inspiration from the famous wet markets in Singapore, Moore focuses purely on the food inspired by his native Carolina coast, and its traditional roadside fish shacks and camps. In 2007, during his tenure as Executive Chef at Agraia in Washington DC (now known as Founding Farmers), Moore’s reputation earned him a spot competing against Chef Michael Symon on “Iron Chef America.” Today Moore continues to fulfill his lifelong dream as an entrepreneur, professional, and preserver of North Carolina fisherman and foodways. Moore was born and raised in the North Carolina coastal town of New Bern, where catching and eating fresh fish and shellfish is a way of life. He draws inspiration from his Eastern North Carolina culinary background, as well as from culinary experiences across the globe.
Chef Website
DABNEY SANDERS is the Project Manager for the Downtown Greenway – a collaborative project of Action Greensboro and the City of Greensboro and Board Chair of the Greensboro Literary Organization, producer of the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. Dabney grew up in Rhode Island, but has lived in North Carolina for more than 30 years and was named the 2019 Jim Roach Downtown Person of the Year by Downtown Greensboro. Dabney has a passion for food, is a self-taught cook, and has cooked professionally in the past, but now enjoys entertaining for friends, family, and to support community organizations. She lives in Fisher Park with her husband, Walker, two dogs Hudson and Scout, and 4 chickens Emma, Adelaide, Phoebe, and Violet.

Craft, Violence, and the Art of Storytelling with Rod Davis, John Hart, and Dennis McCarthy
2021-05-14 17:00 - 18:00 | VIRTUAL
Join us in conversation with novelists JOHN HART, ROD DAVIS, and DENNIS McCARTHY. Hart’s latest novel, The Unwilling, is a thriller framed around the consequences of the Vietnam War for those who served. It is described as “crime fiction at its most raw,” which aptly describes the work of novelist Rod Davis as well. Publisher’s Weekly describes Davis’s 2020 novel East of Texas, West of Hell as a “crime powerhouse–a maelstrom of meth-dealing, human trafficking, and white supremacy. Davis is a great guide through gritty Southern territory.” Dennis McCarthy’s novel, The Gospel According to Billy the Kid, moves an American tale of violence and redemption west to New Mexico. Of this debut novel, fellow Greensboro Bound author Ron Rash says, “this novel does what all of the best ones do: we enter them, but they also enter us, and they stay.” Hosts BRYAN GIEMZA and AMY WELDON talk craft, violence, and the art of storytelling with our three authors. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book images above.
JOHN HART is the author of six New York Times bestsellers. The only author in history to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel consecutively, John has also won the Barry Award, the SIBA Award for Fiction, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in more than seventy countries.
Author Website
ROD DAVIS is the recipient of the inaugural Fiction Award of the PEN Southwest Book Awards in 2005 for Corina’s Way, described by Kirkus Reviews as “a spicy bouillabaisse, New Orleans-set, in the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or John Kennedy Toole: a welcome romp, told with traditional Southern charm.” His PEN/Texas-award-winning essay, The Fate of the Texas Writer, is included in Fifty Years of the Texas Observer and his Texas Monthly story, Wal-marts Across Texas, is excerpted in True Stories by David Byrne. Davis has received numerous awards as a magazine editor and writer. He earned an M.A. in Government at Louisiana State University and studied at the University of Virginia before joining the Army in 1970, serving as a first lieutenant in South Korea. He lives in Texas.
Author Website
DENNIS McCARTHY has been a park ranger, ecologist, speechwriter, editor in chief, professor, and attorney. At work on his second novel, he and his wife and beagle live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
BRYAN GIEMZA, PHD, JD is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University. In addition to his teaching and research he serves as public scholar for the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World. Before coming to Texas Tech he was Director of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
AMY WELDON is an Alabama native, professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and the author, most recently, of Eldorado, Iowa: A Novel.
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Dirty Gold: The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring
2021-05-14 16:00 - 17:00 | VIRTUAL
An in-depth discussion with veteran investigative reporters KYRA GURNEY, NICHOLAS NEHAMAS, JAY WEAVER and JIM WYSS as host JOHN COX digs into their work to tell the story of death, drugs, and corruption within the gold mining industry within Latin America and the the impact the pursuit of greed has on the people caught both willingly and unwillingly within its wake. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
NICHOLAS NEHAMAS is an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald, where he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that broke the Panama Papers in 2016. He and his Herald colleagues were also named Pulitzer finalists in 2019 for the series “Dirty Gold, Clean Cash.” He has co-authored two books, The Grifter’s Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency and Dirty Gold: The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring. He joined the Herald in 2014, where he covered healthcare and real estate before joining the investigations team.
KYRA GURNEY is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. She has worked at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and at the Miami Herald, where she and her co-authors were finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for “Dirty Gold, Clean Cash,” a series on the illegal gold trade. Before working at the Miami Herald, Kyra was a reporter at InSight Crime, a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet based in Colombia. Kyra has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
JAY WEAVER is an award-winning journalist who has covered the federal courts and produced major investigative projects at the Miami Herald for more than 20 years. In 2018, he collaborated with a team of Herald reporters on an investigative series about a multibillion-dollar money-laundering scheme involving Miami imports of tons of gold from South America mined by cocaine traffickers and other criminals, which was honored as a 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Explanatory Reporting. In 2001, Weaver was part of the Miami Herald team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for the paper’s coverage of the federal government’s seizure of Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez. Weaver received his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
JIM WYSS is a prize-winning journalist who has spent most of his career in Latin America. From 2011-2020 he was the Miami Herald’s South America correspondent based in Colombia, where he was also part of the reporting team that uncovered the Panama Papers and won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He now lives in Puerto Rico, where he covers the Caribbean for Bloomberg News. He has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University through the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship.
JOHN COX is the Director of UNC Charlotte’s Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Center. He earned his PhD in History from UNC Chapel Hill and has written and lectured widely on racism and genocide, human rights, and resistance to Nazism and other oppressive systems. He is the author of two books on fascism, genocide, and resistance: To Kill a People: Genocide in the 20th Century (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Circles of Resistance: Leftist, Jewish, and Youth Dissidence during the Third Reich (2009).

A Conversation with Roxane Gay
2021-05-13 19:00 - 20:00 | VIRTUAL
Join The New York Times best-selling author ROXANE GAY in conversation with CYNTHIA GREENLEE. Gay’s writing explores what it means to be a feminist, a woman of color, and quite simply a human being with a body. Gay’s work includes Bad Feminist (2014), Difficult Women (2017), the memoir Hunger (2017), and the forthcoming (out later this year), Unti on Writing. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book images above.
ROXANE GAY’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects.
Author Website
DR. CYNTHIA GREENLEE is a Durham, North Carolina-based historian, writer, and senior editor at The Counter. She’s also the winner of a coveted James Beard Foundation Award for foodways writing, and she’s co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection, an anthology of Black women and nonbinary people writing about reproductive and social justice. Her work has appeared in publications as diverse as Essence, The Nation, The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, the Journal of Women’s History, Vox, Vice, Smithsonian, and the Washington Post.
Author Website

This event is sponsored by

Greensboro Bound Literary Festival
2021-05-13 - 2021-05-16 | VIRTUAL

Dinner With Friends Fundraiser
2021-04-15 18:30 - 20:00 | ZOOM
You’re invited to our first ever VIRTUAL Dinner with Friends! Dinner With Friends is Greensboro Bound’s annual get together/fundraiser. This year we’re doing things a little differently, but that doesn’t mean we still won’t have tons of fun with our fellow book lovers!

About the Event
Purchase a ticket to attend one of 10 simultaneous virtual events, each with its own genre focus. Hosts will facilitate discussions about: cookbooks, literary fiction, memoir/personal essay, mystery/detective, non-fiction, poetry, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, short stories, and young adult/crossover novels— all with a focus on our 2021 Festival authors!
The evening will conclude with a conversation with Greensboro’s own Lee Zacharias, author of the forthcoming novel What A Wonderful World This Could Be.
We’ve got dinner covered, too! Purchase meals from a pre-set menu from downtown restaurants Jerusalem Market or Machete.

TEST EVENT
2021-03-31 15:00 - 17:00 | VIRTUAL
This is a test event. Test. Test. Test.

Greensboro Bound Children's Book Festival
2021-03-08 - 2021-03-12 | VIRTUAL
In partnership with Guilford County Schools, we will be releasing a series of virtual presentations featuring:

Kelly Starling Lyons, author of Dream Builder
Ena Jones, author of Six Feet Below Zero
Victoria Bond, author of Zora and Me: The Summoner (Book 3 of 3)
Melanie Conklin, author of Every Missing Piece
Alan Gratz, author of Ground Zero
Beth Kephart, author of Cloud Hopper
Stacy McAnulty, author of Millionaires for the Month
Scott Reingten, author of the Nyxia seriesAuthor presentations will be made available to Guilford County School students via internal school system distribution.

a conversation with KASEY THORNTON
2021-01-22 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Join us for an evening with debut author Kasey Thornton, hosted by fellow author Drew Perry.
Purchase Lord The One You Love Is Sick from our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
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HOW TO WATCH
This event is FREE, however you must register to access meeting info.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
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LORD THE ONE YOU LOVE IS SICK depicts one group of individuals’ efforts to live a modern life in a traditional Southern town. Gentry Coats’ fatal overdose stuns a small community in North Carolina, triggering a series of tragic even

ts that threaten the town’s traditional values. It triggers a mental breakdown in his best friend, a police officer, whose wife grapples with the burden of her vows in the face of her husband’s disturbing behavior. Bitter and lonely, Gentry’s mother struggles to place blame surrounding the death of her oldest son, while her younger son retreats into a strange and devastating isolation. And, on the outskirts of town, an eight-year old girl and her older sister cope with an unspeakable secret. All the while, the patriarchs of the community sit together gossiping at the local diner, trusting the Lord to heal the afflictions that haunt their beloved town. A novel in stories, Lord the One You Love is Sick is a gorgeously written and heartrending work of fiction from an important new voice in the literature of the American South.
KASEY THORNTON writes literary fiction about the culture of the American South with a focus on religion, family, mental illness, abuse, and grief. She earned her BA in English from Elon University in North Carolina, and attended both the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and North Carolina State University for her MFA in Fiction. During this time, she had the opportunity to study with Wilton Barnhardt, Nina de Gramont, John Kessel, Cassie Kircher, Rebecca Lee, Jill McCorkle, Drew Perry, and others. Thornton lives with fellow author Kevin Kauffmann in Durham County, NC, where members of her family have resided for over two hundred years. Her work has been featured in the Masters Review, Colonnades Literary & Art Journal, and Apeiron Review.
DREW PERRY lives in North Carolina with his wife and two boys, ages 6 and 4. He teaches writing at Elon University. His first novel, This Is Just Exactly Like You (2010), was a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan prize from the Center for Fiction, a Best-of-the-Year pick from The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and a SIBA Okra pick. His second, Kids These Days, was an Amazon Best-of-the-Month pick.

The More Extravagant Feast with Leah Naomi Green
2020-11-20 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Join us for an evening of conversation with Walt Whitman Award-winning poet, LEAH NAOMI GREEN! Hosted by author, Jacob Paul.
This event is co-sponsored by the High Point University Phoenix Series.
Purchase your copies of Leah’s books at our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
How to Watch
Zoom
Meeting ID: 821 4674 4361
Passcode: [REDACTED]
LEAH NAOMI GREEN teaches English and Environmental Studies at Washington and Lee University and lives in the Shenandoah Mountains where she, her partner, and their daughters homestead and grow food. Green received an MFA from The University of California, Irvine. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Paris Review, Tin House, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Pleiades and Shenandoah. Her most recent work, The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press, 2020), which was selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her chapbook, The Ones We Have, received the 2012 Flying Trout Chapbook prize.

THE MORE EXTRAVAGANT FEAST
This book keeps faithful company with the world and earns its name. The darkness and suffering of living on earth are assumed in this work, woven throughout the fabric of its lineated perceptions and insights, and yet, it is ultimately informed by the deep logic of compassion (is there a deeper human logic?) and enacts the wisdom of desire and fecundity reconciled with knowledge of death and boundedness. These poems remind us that when language is used to mediate between a soul’s inner contents and the outer world’s over-abundance of being and competing meanings, it’s possible to both transcend the nihilism of word games, thereby discovering a more meaningful destiny for language, as well as reveal the body of splendor which is Existence.—Li-Young Lee
JACOB PAUL is the author of the novels, Last Tower to Heaven (C&R Press, November 2019), A Song of Ilan (Jaded Ibis, 2015) and Sarah/Sara (Ig, 2010). His most recent performance-based collaboration was showcased at LadyFest CLT. His work has also appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including, most recently in Massachusetts Review and Seneca Review. He teaches creative writing at High Point University in North Carolina.

The Places We Belong
2020-11-13 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
A conversation about belonging, identity, and how we define those things for ourselves, and how others define them for us. Join host Jason Herndon as he chats with authors Gabriel Bump author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong, and Connor Towne O’Neill author of Down Along With That Devil’s Bones. Get your copies of at our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom
Meeting ID: 828 1236 6045
Passcode:[REDACTED]

GABRIEL BUMP grew up in South Shore, Chicago. His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in Slam magazine, the Huffington Post, Springhouse Journal, and other publications. He was awarded the 2016 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award for Fiction. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lives in Buffalo, New York.
Everywhere You Don’t Belong
In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
CONNOR TOWNE O’NEILL‘s writing has appeared in New York magazine, Vulture, Slate, RBMA, and the Village Voice, and he works as a producer on the NPR podcast White Lies, which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting. Originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and teaches at Auburn University and with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. This is his first book.
Down Along With That Devil’s Bones
Journalist Connor Towne O’Neill takes a deep dive into American history, exposing the still-raging battles over monuments dedicated to one of the most notorious Confederate generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Through the lens of these conflicts, O’Neill examines the legacy of white supremacy in America, in a sobering and fascinating work sure to resonate with readers of Tony Horwitz, Timothy B. Tyson, and Robin DiAngelo.
When O’Neill first moved to Alabama, as a white Northerner, he felt somewhat removed from the racism Confederate monuments represented. Then one day in Selma, he stumbled across a group of citizens protecting a monument to Forrest, the officer who became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and whom William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” O’Neill sets off to visit other disputed memorials to Forrest across the South, talking with men and women who believe they are protecting their heritage, and those who have a different view of the man’s poisonous history.
O’Neill’s reporting and thoughtful, deeply personal analysis make it clear that white supremacy is not a regional affliction but is in fact coded into the DNA of the entire country. Down Along with That Devil’s Bones presents an important and eye-opening account of how we got from Appomattox to Charlottesville, and where, if we can truly understand and transcend our past, we could be headed next.

An Evening with Laila Lalami
2020-10-27 19:00 - 20:00 | VIRTUAL
LAILA LALAMI, award-winning novelist and essayist, joins the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) University Libraries for a virtual author talk-back. Dr. Lalami will discuss her collection of work and latest publication, Conditional Citizens. Hosted by Dr. Omar Ali, Dean of the UNCG Lloyd International Honors College and Professor of Global and Comparative African Diaspora History at UNCG. This is event is co-sponsored by the UNCG University Libraries, Lloyd International Honors College, UNCG School of Education, and Greensboro Bound.
Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of four novels, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a best-of-2019 selection from NPR, Time, and Kirkus, and a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has received fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a full professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.
Get your copies at our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
Registration is required for this event.

Make It Taste Good
2020-10-22 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
We’re talking good eats with North Carolina’s native daughter, James Beard-award winning chef and TV personality VIVIAN HOWARD and James Beard-award nominated chef ASHA GOMEZ!

Get your copies of This Will Make It Taste Good and I Cook In Color at our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom
Meeting ID: 821 5897 2573
Passcode: [REDACTED]

VIVIAN HOWARD is the New York Times bestselling author of Deep Run Roots, which was named Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She co-created and stars in the public television shows Somewhere South and A Chef’s Life, for which she has won Peabody, Emmy, and James Beard awards. She runs the restaurants Chef and the Farmer, Benny’s Big Time, Lenoir, and Handy & Hot. Vivian lives in Deep Run, North Carolina, with her husband, Ben, and their twins, Theo and Flo.
ASHA GOMEZ is the author of the award-winning cookbook My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen, and runs The Third Space, an Atlanta culinary studio. Asha also works as a Chef Ambassador for CARE specifically in the area of food insecurity. She’s also involved with the James Beard’s Foundation’s Chef Boot Camp for Policy Change.

This Will Make It Taste Good
Each chapter of This Will Make It Taste Good is built on a flavor hero—a simple but powerful recipe like her briny green sauce, spiced nuts, fruit preserves, deeply caramelized onions, and spicy pickled tomatoes. Like a belt that lends you a waist when you’re feeling baggy, these flavor heroes brighten, deepen, and define your food. And because food is the language Vivian uses to talk about her life, that’s what these recipes do, next to stories that offer a glimpse at the people, challenges, and lessons learned that stock the pantry of her life.
I Cook in Color
There’s a big, colorful world out there, and Asha Gomez takes inspiration from all of it, especially the food. Best known for her easy mix of cooking traditions from the American South and her homeland of Kerala in Southern India, Asha Gomez continues to evolve her unique cooking style. In this next vibrant cookbook, I COOK IN COLOR: Bright Flavors from My Kitchen and Around the World, Asha embraces dishes from across the globe, and allows readers to take a flavorful voyage from the comfort of their own home kitchen. Co-author Martha Hall Foose is the author of Screen Doors & Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales of a Southern Cook, the best-selling homage to Southern cooking that won both the James Beard Award for American Cooking and the Southern Independent Booksellers Award.

Voting for Racial Justice
2020-10-09 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Join us in our continued conversation on the state our democracy, and how African Americans have used multiple independent political tactics and strategies to expand democracy and uphold civil and political rights since the founding of the nation.
How to Watch
zoom.us/join
Meeting ID: 848 0061 1178
Passcode: [REDACTED]
DR. OMAR ALI is dean of Lloyd International Honors College and professor of global and comparative African diaspora history at The University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His latest work is the revised and expanded edition of In Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-party Movements in the United States. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and was named the Carnegie Foundation North Carolina professor of the year.
This new edition of Ali’s groundbreaking In Balance of Power includes an epilogue by independent political analyst and leader Jacqueline Salit. New material addresses the historic presidencies of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, as well as the rising tide of independent and anti-party sentiments. Get your copy at our independent bookseller partner, Scuppernong Books!
Dr. Ali is joined by host LEKHA SHUPEK. Lekha is the North Carolina State Director for All On The Line, a grassroots campaign to bring citizens across every issue together to win on redistricting in 2021. In this role she writes on redistricting policy, leads public education initiatives, and pulls together broad coalitions to fight for Fair Maps. She has a deep commitment to social justice work and previously served as Statewide Campaigns Manager for the ACLU of North Carolina. She also holds a Ph.D. in History from UNC Chapel Hill and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

The Future of Democracy, Part 2: Controlling the Vote
2020-09-25 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
An in-depth conversation on the future of democracy as we know it and the masters that pull the puppet strings. With NANCY MACLEAN, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, and GENE NICHOL, author of Indecent Assembly: The North Carolina Legislature’s Blueprint for the War on Democracy and Equality. Hosted by John Cox, Associate Professor and Director of Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies at UNC Charlotte.
Purchase books from our independent book seller partner, Scuppernong Books!
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom
Meeting ID: 839 9440 2620
Passcode: [REDACTED]
This event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad, a nonpartisan political organization encouraging informed and active participation in government. It influences public policy through education and advocacy.

NANCY MACLEAN is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century U.S and the William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Publishers Weekly has described Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” A finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, it won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award.

GENE R. NICHOL is the Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC, commentator, and author. In 2005 he was inducted into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, an honor granted by the State of North Carolina to individuals who have shown extraordinary service to the state. It is the highest award for state service granted by the Office of the Governor. He was director of the UNC Poverty Center until it was closed by the UNC Board of Governors for publishing articles critical of the then governor and General Assembly. Since 2015, his research has been supported by the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund. In addition to Indecent Assembly, he is also the author of of The Faces of Poverty in North Carolina: Stories from Our Invisible Citizens.

Indecent Assembly: The North Carolina Legislature’s Blueprint for the War on Democracy and EqualityIn 2013, North Carolina state legislature was captured by Republicans determined to produce an ultra-conservative political regime. They moved quickly and successfully toward that goal, which the New York Times calls “North Carolina’s pioneering work in bigotry.” Other states have begun to follow the “North Carolina playbook.”
Indecent Assembly details the agenda, impacts, and transgressions of the Republican North Carolina General Assembly. Nichol outlines the stoutest war waged against people of color and low-income citizens seen in America for a half-century. In 2019, the state of North Carolina, in short, is involved in a brutal battle for its own decency. If the contest is lost here, especially in the coming 2020 election season, other states will likely abandon defining cornerstones of American liberty and equality as well.

$$ Young Writers Workshop: Bill Konigsberg
2020-09-24 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Join award-winning, former Greensboro Bound YA author BILL KONIGSBERG for a talk on the art and craft of writing for young adults LIVE this THURSDAY, September 24 at 7:00PM. This PAID EVENT is hosted by our independent book seller partner Scuppernong Books! http://www.scuppernongbooks.com Registration includes Zoom access and a copy of Bill’s new novel The Bridge.

The Future of Democracy, Part 1: Counting the Vote
2020-09-17 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
An in-depth conversation on the voting, voter rights, and who is (and isn’t) counted in the process, with ERIN GEIGER SMITH, author of Thank You For Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America, and
GILDA R. DANIELS, author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America. Hosted by Gary Kenton, founding member of Democracy Greensboro.
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom
Meeting ID: 874 0090 8092
Passcode: [REDACTED]
This event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad, a nonpartisan political organization encouraging informed and active participation in government. It influences public policy through education and advocacy.

THANK YOU FOR VOTING started as a side project for Geiger Smith. Like so many fellow Americans navigating the post-2016 landscape, she wanted to better understand the electorate. But how? “I’ve never wanted to cover politics directly, so I was struggling to find a way to write about the ONE BIG STORY that was happening,” she recalls. “And then one fall day I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a clip of Reese Witherspoon interviewing Ann Patchett, and Ann said she was working on a non-fiction book about women and voting. I immediately knew I wanted to be involved in some way.” Initially tasked with research by the New York Times bestselling author, Geiger Smith quickly became obsessed with the project. At Patchett’s suggestion and with her blessing, Geiger Smith took the book over as her own.
ERIN GEIGER SMIITH is a journalist who has written for publications including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She graduated from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, The University of Texas School of Law, and the University of Texas at Austin, and worked at Business Insider and Reuters covering legal news. She is also the author of Thank You for Voting Young Readers’ Edition (HarperCollins; On Sale: June 16, 2020; Hardcover). She lives in Manhattan with her husband and son. For more information, please follow @erin_gs on Twitter or @egs and @thankyouforvoting on Instagram.

UNCOUNTED An answer to the assault on voting rights—crucial reading in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Uncounted examines the phenomenon of disenfranchisement through the lens of history, race, law, and the democratic process. Gilda R. Daniels, who served as Deputy Chief in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and more than two decades of voting rights experience, argues that voter suppression works in cycles, constantly adapting and finding new ways to hinder access for an exponentially growing minority population. She warns that a premeditated strategy of restrictive laws and deceptive practices has taken root and is eroding the very basis of American democracy—the right to vote!
GILDA DANIELS is an Associate Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the Director of the multi-racial civil rights organization Litigation for Advancement Project’s National Office. She is a nationally recognized voting rights and election law expert. She served as a Deputy Chief in the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Professor Daniels has two decades of litigation, negotiation and consulting experience in the substantive
voting rights area. She has investigated, negotiated and litigated cases involving the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the National Voter Registration Act and other voting statutes. Prior to beginning her voting rights career, Daniels was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights representing death row inmates and bringing prison condition cases in Georgia and Alabama. She clerked in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit with the Honorable Joseph W. Hatchett and is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar.

Crimson Letters: Voice from Death Row, Tessie Castillo with special guest Jon Powell and co-author Michael (Alim) Braxton
2020-08-20 16:30 - 18:30 | ZOOM
Join us in a critical four-part conversation on criminal justice and death penalty reform, racial and socio-economic inequality, and quite simply, the human dignity that each of us deserves.
Each of Tessie’s four co-authors and a special guest will join us for a live call-in four successive events.
How to Watch
Visit zoom.us
Meeting ID: 858 3167 8194
Passcode: [REDACTED]
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AUGUST 20
Topic: What would ideal criminal justice reform look like?
Discussion: People often throw around the term “criminal justice reform,” but what exactly does that mean? We will discuss the concept of “restorative justice,” which focuses not just on punishment, but on repairing the harm caused by criminal behavior. Often this means bringing victims, offenders and the community together to create solutions that offer repair and closure and accountability. What can ordinary citizens do to support restorative justice or criminal justice reform efforts in their communities?
Special Guest: Jon Powell, Director of the Restorative Justice Clinic at Campbell University + co-author Michael J. Braxton, aka Alim

About Crimson Letters: What started as a volunteer journaling class in late 2013 would grow into genuine, sincere, and heartfelt friendships with several men on North Carolina’s Death Row. Tessie Castillo’s collaborative work, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, gives readers stark insight into the utter agony and dehumanization of long-term incarceration, as well as stories of friendship, family, and finding life after a death sentence.
Get your copy of Tessie’s Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row at Scuppernong Books.

TESSIE CASTILLO is a freelance journalist based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She specializes in criminal justice , drug policy, and harm reduction. In 2014 she became one of the first members of the public invited inside North Carolina’s Death Row. This extraordinary opportunity, as well as the correspondence she developed with several death row residents, helped launch her passion for criminal justice reform. Crimson Letters: Voice from Death Row is her first book.

JON POWELL serves as the director of the Restorative Justice Clinic at Campbell University. The program receives referrals from the juvenile justice system, juvenile court, Wake County Schools and the Capital Area Teen Court program. Part of the mission of the Restorative Justice Clinic is to help spread the word of Restorative Justice throughout the state of North Carolina and to assist others in the state in starting Restorative Justice programming. Jon has spoken on many occasions to various groups on the topic of Restorative Justice and has assisted organizations in starting mediation programs based on the Campbell model. Prior to working with the project, Jon practiced law in Wake and Harnett counties. His primary focus was in criminal defense with an emphasis on juvenile law.

MICHAEL JEROME BRAXTON, also known as Alim, is a rapper and spiritual leader on North Carolina’s Death Row. A reformed prisoner known as Rome Alone in the rap world, he has the distinction of being the only rapper in the world to release music from Death Row. He is a contributing playwright for “Serving Life”, a play about the inner thoughts of men facing the death penalty. He is also a recording artist with several artist with several songs currently on Sound Cloud. https://soundcloud.com/rromealone He has an upcoming album entitled, “Mercy On My Soul”. He serves as Iman and spiritual leader for the Muslim Men of Central Prison’s Death Row. You can find him on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram at @rromealone

Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World
2020-08-14 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Pour yourself a drink and join Kathleen Purvis as she chats with Daniel S. Pierce about his latest book, Tar Heel Lightnin’: How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World.

Get your copy at Scuppernong Books, and grab Kathleen’s Distilling the South: A Guide to Southern Craft Liquors and the People Who Make Them while you’re there!
How to Watch
Zoom
Meeting ID: 823 1726 9378
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From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina boasted some of the nation’s most restrictive laws on alcohol production and sale. For much of this era, it was also the nation’s leading producer of bootleg liquor. Over the years, written accounts, popular songs, and Hollywood movies have turned the state’s moonshiners, fast cars, and frustrated Feds into legends. But in Tar Heel Lightnin’, Daniel S. Pierce tells the real history of moonshine in North Carolina as never before. This well-illustrated, entertaining book introduces a surprisingly varied cast of characters who operated secret stills and ran liquor from the swamps of the Tidewater to Piedmont forests and mountain coves. From the state’s earliest days through Prohibition to the present, Pierce shows that moonshine crossed race and economic lines, linking men and women, the rebellious and the respectable, the oppressed and the merely opportunistic. As Pierce recounts, even churchgoing types might run shipments of “that good ol’ mountain dew” when hard times came and there was no social safety net to break the fall.
Folklore, popular culture, and changing laws have helped fuel a renaissance in making and drinking commercial moonshine, and Pierce shows how today’s producers understand their ties to the past. Above all, this book reveals that moonshine’s long, colorful history features surprises that can change how we understand a state and a region.
DANIEL S. PIERCE the author of six books, including Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France. He serves as Interdisciplinary Distinguished Professor of the Mountain South and resident professional hillbilly at the University of North Carolina Asheville where he teaches courses on the South, Appalachia, North Carolina, and the National Parks.
KATHLEEN PURVIS is a James Beard Award nominated author and food journalist with an impressive resume of publications, including Our State Magazine, the Charlotte Observor, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, and she was listed Saveur’s 10th Annual “Top 100”. Her books include, Distilling the South: A Guide to Southern Craft Liquors and the People Who Make Them (UNC Press, 2018).
RECIPES FOR YOUR PLEASURE

(from Daniel)
Amos Owens’s (legendary Rutherford county moonshinder) Cherry Bounce

3 parts good, stout NC corn whiskey (legal these days!)
1 part good, fresh cherry juice
1 part sourwood honey (or substitute with simple syrup)

A Conversation with Jill McCorkle
2020-08-01 19:00 - 20:00 | ZOOM
Join Julia Ridley-Smith, in conversation with Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life, Carolina Moon, Going Away Shoes, and her latest work, Hieroglyphics (Algonquin Books, July 28, 2020)
Grab your copy at Scuppernong Books today!
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom
Meeting ID: 841 4847 5761
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A mesmerizing novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations.
Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically— lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.
Now, after many years in Boston, they’ve retired to North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d hoped to keep buried. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.
Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you. In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory.
JILL MCCORKLE‘s first two novels were released simultaneously when she was just out of college, and the New York Times called her “a born novelist.” Since then, she has published six novels and four collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories several times, as well as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her most recent novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, the Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

JULIE RIDLEY SMITH Julia teaches in the English Department at UNC Greensboro and is the former editor of Inch magazine and former associate editor at Bull City Press. She worked for almost twenty years as a freelance editor of academic books for university presses. A firm believer that art is for everyone and helps people build stronger communities, she enjoys giving tours as a volunteer docent at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Arts and Letters, the Carolina Quarterly, Chelsea, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the Greensboro Review, the New England Review, Southern Cultures, and The Southern Review, among other places. Her book and art reviews have been published in Art Papers, Our State, the Raleigh News and Observer, and elsewhere.
