Speculative Fiction with Rivers Solomon & KM Szpara
2021-05-15 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | 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.

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.

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

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.

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:

Poems in a Crisis with Traci Brimhall, Nickole Brown, and Alice Quinn
2021-05-15 16:00 - 17:00 | 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.

LIVE A Conversation with Billy Collins & Ron Rash
2021-05-15 19:00 - 20:00 | LIVE ZOOM
Former US Poet Laureate BILLY COLLINS has been hailed as “the most popular poet in America.” RON RASH has been celebrated as the “Appalachian Shakespeare.” Host Michael Gaspeny will investigate the mysteries of art and the heart in a discussion of their latest works (Whale Day: And Other Poems and In the Valley: Stories) that promises to ripple with wit and soar with elegiac power. [event is free, but registration is required]

Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book images above.
BILLY COLLINS is the author of twelve collections of poetry including The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife Suzannah.
Author Website
RON RASH is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
Author Website
Michael Gaspeny is the author of the novella in verse, The Tyranny of Questions (Unicorn Press) and the chapbooks Re-Write Men and Vocation. He has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition and the O. Henry Festival Short Story Contest. He has served as moderator for several Scuppernong and Greensboro Bound events, including forums on Flannery O’Connor and James Baldwin. A former reporter and sportswriter, he taught journalism and English for almost forty years, mainly at Bennett College and High Point University, where he won the distinguished teaching award. For hospice service in Greensboro, North Carolina, he has received The Governor’s Award for Volunteer Excellence.

This event is sponsored by:

Our Stories, Our Voices: Writing As Activism
2021-05-16 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 AMBER SMITH and IW GREGORIO as they discuss what it means to write in one’s own voice, how do you make the personal political, what is the role of literature and art in social justice, and how is artistic or literary activism defined.
Saturday, 5/15 – Part 1 – Our Stories, Our Voices: Four Years On
Sunday, 5/16 – Your Story, Your Voice: A Writing Workshop

Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book images above.

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
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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Writing Outside the Lines: Nonbinary Authors Changing YA, with Mason Deaver & Nita Tyndall
2021-05-16 11:00 - 12:00 | VIRTUAL
Authors MASON DEAVER and NITA TYNDALL join host SHANNON JONES in a conversation about how Young Adult authors outside the gender binary are reshaping that world, pulling down pillars of black and white to tell stories of what growing up can mean when you feel like there’s no place for “someone like you.” In a South where queer is still occasionally spat like a curse and many people have never heard terms like cis, trans, or nonbinary, Nita Tyndall and Mason Deaver show us that growing up southern and nonbinary doesn’t have to be lonely, and can even open your eyes to loves and griefs and joys you never could have found anywhere else. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.

MASON DEAVER, an award-winning, bestselling author and designer, was born and raised in a small eastern North Carolina town. They now live in Charlotte where they’re an active fan of horror movies and video games.
Author Website
NITA TYNDALL is a passionate queer advocate and literary translator who writes the kinds of books they needed in high school. Their translations from the German have appeared in World Literature Today, and they have previously written for outlets like Autostraddle and were part of the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat in 2017. They live in North Carolina with their partner and a beautifully fluffy cat, Pumpkin.
Author Website
SHANNON JONES is a queer writer and bookseller who manages Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC. She’s also proud to help run the Authors Engaging Students program at Greensboro Bound which brings authors and books to Guilford County Schools students.
This event is sponsored by

Art of Memoir with Ginger Gaffney and James Tate Hill
2021-05-16 12:00 - 13:00 | VIRTUAL
Authors GINGER GAFFNEY and JAMES TATE (JT) HILL talk about the craft of writing memoir, sifting through your personal life, and facing your vulnerability on the page with host STEVE MITCHELL. Gaffney’s Half Broke is the memoir of a woman who related more to horses than people and how she finds a home of sorts teaching at an alternative prison ranch. Blind Man’s Bluff is James Tate Hill’s memoir of becoming legally blind at age 16, but pretending for years that he was not. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
GINGER GAFFNEY received her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has been published in Witness Magazine, The Utne Reader, Tin House and other publications. She lives between Mesa Prieta and the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico.
Author Website
JAMES TATE HILL is the author of a memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff, coming July 2021 from W. W. Norton. His fiction debut, Academy Gothic, won the Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel. His essays have been listed as Notable in the 2019 and 2020 editions of Best American Essays, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Writer’s Digest, Story Quarterly, and Hobart, among others. He serves as fiction editor for the literary journal Monkeybicycle and contributing editor for Literary Hub, where he writes a monthly audiobooks column. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his wife.
Author Website
STEVE MITCHELL is an award-winning writer and journalist. His novel, Cloud Diary, is published by C&R Press. His book of short stories is The Naming of Ghosts from Press 53. He is a winner of the Curt Johnson Prose Prize and the Lorian Hemingway International Short Story Prize. He’s currently writing a mix of memoir and film criticism for a project he calls Mirrorbox. He’s co-owner of Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC.

LIVE Your Story, Your Voice: A Writing Workshop
2021-05-16 12:00 - 13:30 | LIVE ZOOM
Join Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America editor AMY REED and contributors AMBER SMITH and IW GREGORIO in a writing workshop to explore how to find your own “voice” as a writer. Each author will speak about their journey and then guide participants through a writing exercise to uncover your own voice. Workshop will conclude with a participant discussion and an opportunity to share your writing. A great opportunity to explore writing in an authentic voice for young adults, parents of young adults, aspiring YA writers, and marginalized communities.

Conversations
Saturday, 5/15 – Part 1 – Our Stories, Our Voices: Four Years On
Sunday, 5/16 – Part 2 – Our Stories, Our Voices: Writing As Activism

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
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

This event is sponsored by:

The Soul of the Novel: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle & Kaitlyn Greenidge, with Zelda Lockhart
2021-05-16 13:00 - 14:00 | VIRTUAL
KAITLYN GREENIDGE and ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE are two rising stars in the world of literary fiction. Greenidge’s Libertie has been called “Pure brilliance. So much will be written about how it blends history and magic into a new kind of telling, how it spins the past to draw deft circles around our present–but none of it will measure up to the singular joy of reading this book.” And Lee Smith says of Clapsaddle’s Even As We Breathe: “Clapsaddle lifts the curtain to show us a South we don’t know, revealed through the struggles of Cowney Sequoyah, a young man growing up within the Cherokee Nation of far Western North Carolina. A wonderful novel, complicated as life itself — thrilling, mysterious, and finally, a revelation!” This conversation is moderated by NC novelist ZELDA LOCKHART and informed by her work, The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry.
[rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
KAITLYN GREENIDGE debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times, and her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Greenidge lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Author Website
ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her work Going to Water won the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium and was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She is co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers’ Network. She resides in Qualla, North Carolina.
Author Website
ZELDA LOCKHART holds a PhD in Expressive Arts Therapies, an MA in Literature and a certificate in writing, directing and editing from the New York Film Academy. Her latest books include Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Doris Payne with Zelda Lockhart, and The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry. She is also the author of Fifth Born and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle. She is Director at Her Story Garden Studios: Inspiring Black Women to Self-Define, Heal and Liberate Through the Literary Arts, and Publisher at LaVenson Press: Publishing for Women & Girls of Color. Organizations globally have recognized Dr. Lockhart’s talent as an inspiring teacher, facilitator, and public speaker.
Author Website

This event is sponsored by

LIVE Candacy Taylor and The Historic Magnolia House
2021-05-16 14:00 - 15:00 | LIVE ZOOM
CANDACY TAYLOR, author of Overground Railroad:The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, joins preservationist NATALIE PASS-MILLER and The Historic Magnolia House, one of only four Green Book sites in North Carolina still in operation. Taylor reaches into her personal history to share the story of the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America. This beautifully researched and illustrated book chronicles the publication of the Green Book between 1936-1967. Pass-Miller’s family purchased the home at 442 Gorell Street in 1995 and worked over the next 22 years on it’s restoration. The Magnolia House was frequented by some of our nation’s most well-known African Americans including James Baldwin, Louise Armstrong, and Jackie Robinson during segregation. Work is underway to complete its restoration as a museum and to bring it back into operation as a hotel. Hosted by RODNEY DAWSON. [event is free, but registration is required]

Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
CANDACY TAYLOR is an award-winning author, photographer and cultural documentarian working on a multidisciplinary project based on the Green Book. She is the author of the bestselling book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Books). Taylor is also the curator and content specialist for the exhibition, The Negro Motorist Green Book, which is being toured by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) from 2020 to 2024. Taylor was a fellow at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University under the direction of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and her projects have been funded by numerous organizations including, The Library of Congress, National Geographic, The American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Park Service, The National Trust, and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Taylor’s work has been featured in over 65 media outlets including The Atlantic, CBS Sunday Morning, The Guardian UK, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, PBS Newshour, and The Wall St. Journal. Taylor lives in Harlem, New York.
Author Website
NATALIE PASS-MILLER is the owner and operator of The Historic Magnolia House and Inn. A Greensboro native, Natalie attended NC A&T State University where she received a degree in nursing. She later became an IT professional and traveled around the southeast with her family, before moving back to Greensboro in 2018 to help her father, Sam Pass, complete the restoration work on the home. Natalie has a rich family lineage that includes her great, great grandfather, Jefferson Davis Diggs, who was one of the founders of the school that would become Winston-Salem State University; her uncle Samuel Penn, was Greensboro’s first Black police officers; and her aunt Eloise Logan-Penn, was the first Black woman to run a music program in the local schools and created the Delta Sigma Theta “Sweetheart Song”. In April, The Magnolia House announced that it would once again open as an inn this fall.
Magnolia House Website
RODNEY DAWSON is the Curator of Education for the Greensboro Historical Museum. He is an Army veteran, former on-air radio personality, and former Crisis Prevention Intervention instructor. He received his Ed.S (Education Specialist) degree from Liberty University.
He is responsible for a variety of the Museum’s virtual experiences, including the Juneteenth celebration and a forthcoming Holocaust program.
This event is sponsored by:

A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writers of Color on the New American South
2021-05-16 15:00 - 16:00 | VIRTUAL
A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writers of Color on the New American South editor CINELLE BARNES fell in love with a boy from the Carolinas, moved South with him, and immediately encountered the worst and the best The South has to offer. Committed to “making this place as big as it is,” she found 21 other writers of color, both established and emerging, who are also confronting the paradoxes that envelop the South. A Measure of Belonging is the space she held for their stories. Contributors IVELISSE RODRIGUEZ and DIANA CEJAS join us to talk about their experiences— the good, the bad, and the befuddling— of living down south. [rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
CINELLE BARNES is a memoirist, essayist, and educator from Manila, Philippines, and is the author of Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir (Little A, 2018) and Malaya: Essays on Freedom (Little A, 2019), and the editor the New York Times New & Noteworthy book, A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writes of Color on the New American South (Hub City Press, 2020). She earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Converse College. She is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book on climate justice and the Philippine water crisis.
Author Website
IVELISSE RODRIGUEZ’s debut short story collection Love War Stories is a 2019 PEN/Faulkner finalist and a 2018 Foreword Reviews INDIES finalist. She is the founder and editor of an interview series focused on contemporary Puerto Rican writers published in Centro Voices. She was a senior fiction editor at Kweli and is a Kimbilio fellow and a VONA/Voices alum. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College and a Ph.D. in English-creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Author Website

DIANA CEJAS is a pediatric neurologist and writer in Durham, NC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in medical journals and literary magazines including The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Iowa Review, and Catapult, among others. She is currently working on a memoir that describes her life as a physician-patient. She spends her days off on her family’s farm gardening and tending to their honeybees.

Naima Coster & Leesa Cross-Smith
2021-05-16 16:00 - 17:00 | VIRTUAL
At the center of the powerful, tender new titles, What’s Mine and Yours by NAIMA COSTER and This Close to Okay by LEESA CROSS-SMITH, are deftly wrought, perfectly imperfect characters whose paths can never be unwoven from not only each other, but also from the ways we see our communities and ourselves. Life is often, if not entirely, a series of crossed paths. Some paths are random kismet, some are paths you get to suddenly, with a crash. Hosted by MACKENZIE FILSON.
[rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
NAIMA COSTER is the author of Halsey Street and What’s Mine and Yours. Naima has taught writing for over a decade in community settings, youth programs, and universities. Most recently, she has taught writing in the MFA programs at the City College of New York, Antioch University in L.A., and the University of Michigan. She also writes the newsletter, Bloom How You Must. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Author Website
LEESA CROSS-SMITH is God’s little creature from Kentucky. She is an INFJ, a homemaker, a plant lover, and the author of This Close To Okay, So We Can Glow: Short Stories, Every Kiss A War and Whiskey & Ribbons. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and children.
Author Website
MACKENZIE FILSON is a writer, bookseller, and too-proud Floridian. A graduate of Emerson College’s publishing program as well as Columbia University’s publishing course, she has worked in publicity for Penguin Random House, as well as a bookseller for The Harvard Coop, Skylight Books and, of course, Scuppernong Books.

A Conversation on Race & Grace in America, with Denise Kiernan & D. Watkins
2021-05-16 17:00 - 18:00 | VIRTUAL
The non-fiction work of DENISE KIERNAN has become surefire bestseller material (The Girls of Atomic City, The Last Castle) and her latest book, We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, a President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace, brings her considerable gifts to the untold story of Lincoln and the burgeoning of the Thanksgiving holiday. D. WATKINS, author of the recent We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress (and also The Cook-Up: A Crack Rock Memoir and The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America), introduces you to Down Bottom, the storied community of East Baltimore that holds a mirror to America’s poor black neighborhoods–“hoods” that could just as easily be in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, or Atlanta. As Watkins sees it, the perspective of people who live in economically disadvantaged black communities is largely absent from the commentary of many top intellectuals who speak and write about race.[rsvp required; see below]
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
DENISE KIERNAN is a writer and producer. She writes for herself, has ghost written, and has written for both adults and children. And she’s occasionally written with her husband, author Joseph D’Agnese. She started out in journalism and has covered everything from women’s issues, sports and history to food, travel and education in places like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Saveur, Discover, Ms., Reader’s Digest, and others. She also worked as head writer for ABC‘s “Who Wants to be Millionaire” during its Emmy award-winning first season and has produced for ESPN, MSNBC and a variety of independent productions.
Author Website
D. WATKINS is Editor at Large for Salon. He holds a Master’s in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore where he is a college lecturer and founder of the BMORE Writers Project. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America and The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir and We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America. Watkins is from and lives in Baltimore.
Author Website

Wilmington's Lie: A Conversation with John Sayles & David Zucchino
2021-05-16 18:00 - 19:00 | VIRTUAL
JOHN SAYLES is an indy film legend. He has written and directed dozens of movies including Lone Star, Brother From Another Planet, Matewan, Eight Men Out, and The Secret of Roan Inish. Sayles has also written a handful of novels and story collections. His 2011 novel, A Moment in the Sun, looks at America in 1898 and the Wilmington Race Riot figures prominently in the narrative. DAVID ZUCCHINO’s 2020 nonfiction book, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, is the definitive book on the massacre. Together, Sayles and Zucchino will talk about the atmosphere in Wilmington in 1898 and the lasting impact of the white riot through the 20th Century. The discussion will also focus on the parallels with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the continued strain of white supremacy in America. Hosted by BRIAN LAMPKIN. (rsvp required; see below)
Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.
DAVID ZUCCHINO is the author of Wilmington’s Lie, Thunder Run and Myth of the Welfare Queen. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times, covering Afghanistan and Iraq. He has been a foreign correspondent from more than 30 years, reporting from more than three dozen countries. He is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from apartheid South Africa.
Author Website
JOHN SAYLES career as a storyteller began with his fiction. His first novel was Pride of the Bimbos (1975) followed by Union Dues (nominated for National Book Award and National Critics Circle Award), the short story collection At the Anarchists Convention, Los Gusanos, Dillinger in Hollywood, and his epic historical novel A Moment in the Sun . His latest work is Yellow Earth. Fiction brought Sayles to the attention of legendary Director/Producer Roger Corman, for whom he wrote screenplays. Screenwriting is still Sayles’ primary profession, and credited or not, he has been able to work in a myriad of genres.
Author Website
BRIAN LAMPKIN is the Vice Chair of the Greensboro Literary Organization, the producer of the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival, author of The Tarboro Three: Rape, Race, and Secrecy, and co-owner of Scuppernong Books. A former social worker and teacher, Brian spends his life advocating for social justice and sharing his love of the written word with any and everyone who walks through Scup’s doors.

Guilford County Schools High School Poet Laureate Year-end Reading
2021-05-19 18:00 - 21:00 | LIVE ZOOM
Hosted by Jennifer Worrells, HS Poet Laureate coordinator and Library Media Specialist at Grimsley High School.
2021 Poetry Judge
J. SCOTT WALKER is an English and creative writing teacher based in Greensboro. When he’s not teaching he writes songs, plays, and poetry. A graduate of Appalachian State University and the University of Alaska, his poems have appeared in Town Creek Poetry, Big River Poetry, Cold Mountain Review, and Cirque. The emphasis on place in his work is the natural product of having lived in ten US states including both Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Alaska. He has also traveled extensively outside of the US both in a physical sense and also in his imagination. His collection A Concept of Right Now was published in 2019.
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An Evening with Amor Towles
2022-05-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Cone Ballroom, Elliot University Center Auditorium, UNCG, 507 Stirling Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412
This event is sold out!
If you have questions about your existing Amor Towles reservation, please contact the UNCG University Libraries at library.events@uncg.edu.
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THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT AN EXISTING RESERVATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE UNCG UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AT library.events(at)uncg.edu.An Evening with AMOR TOWLES, hosted by XHENET ALIU.
Born and raised in the Boston area, AMOR TOWLES graduated from Yale College and received an MA in English from Stanford University. His thesis at Stanford, a short story cycle called “The Temptations of Pleasure”, was published in 1989 in Paris Review No. 112. His new novel, The Lincoln Highway, debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and was a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2021, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021, and was #1 on Amazon’s list of the Best Books of the Year.
Mr. Towles’s first novel, Rules of Civility, which was published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. The book has been translated into over 15 languages, its French translation receiving the 2012 Prix Fitzgerald. In the fall of 2012, the novel was optioned by Lionsgate to be made into a feature film. Mr. Towles’s second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, which was published in 2016, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over 52 weeks in hardcover and was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. The book has been translated into over thirty-five languages including Russian. In the summer of 2017, the novel was optioned by Entertainment One and the British director, Tom Harper, to be made into a 6-8 hour miniseries starring Kenneth Branagh. He is also the author of the ebook You Have Arrived at Your Destination as part of Amazon’s Forward collection.
Having worked as an investment professional for over twenty years, Mr. Towles now devotes himself full time to writing in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.XHENET ALIU is the author of the novel Brass, winner of the biennial Townsend Prize and 2018 Georgia Author of the Year First Novel Prize, and the short story collection Domesticated Wild Things, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in fiction. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. This event is co-sponsored by:

A Musical Thriller: Brendan Slocumb and Tona Brown in Conversation
2022-05-20 17:00 - 18:00 | Tew Recital Hall, UNCG School of Music, 100 McIver Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
Advanced registration for this event is closed. However, you may "walk-up" and register onsite.

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
BRENDAN SLOCUMB’S The Violin Conspiracy is a best-selling crime/thriller for the classical world and TONA BROWN’S work has thrilled audiences from Carnegie Hall to the White House with both her voice and violin. This one-of-a-kind conversation will only happen at Greensboro Bound! Hosted by DR. REBECCA MacLEOD.
You may also be interested in:
• Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice

BRENDAN SLOCUMB was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than twenty years he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. He is currently working on his second novel.
TONA BROWN Vocalist, violinist, entrepreneur, and teacher Tona Brown has an international performance career throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe as a violinist and mezzo-soprano. Ms. Brown is also an advocate for transgender issues in the arts, often speaking and performing at colleges and universities. She is the first transgender woman of color to perform the National Anthem for a sitting President at the LGBT Leadership Gala Dinner for former President Barack Obama at the Sheraton in NYC. She is also the first transgender woman to headline at Carnegie Hall in a program of African-American composers with an all-inclusive LGBT cast of performers. Ms. Brown graduated from the Governor’s School for the Arts, a prestigious high school for gifted and talented students. She was formally educated at the Shenandoah University and Conservatory of Music, studying violin performance with minors in viola, piano, and voice. For Shenandoah University’s 2021 production of “Suor Angelica”, she recorded an opera movie, playing the role of La Zia Principessa. Ms. Brown will be performing in a lead transgender role as Hannah After in the opera “As One” by Laura Kaminsky with the Lowell Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Orlando Cela in the fall of 2021. Ms. Brown was also asked to do a masterclass on Transgender Voices by the Virginia National Association of Teachers. She teaches private lessons to students with her company Aida Studios.
DR. REBECCA MacLEOD is Professor of Music Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she directs the string education program and conducts the UNCG Sinfonia. She is the author of Teaching Strings in Today’s Classroom and is published in Journal of Research in Music Education, International Journal of Music Education, Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, Journal of Music Teacher Education, String Research Journal, Psychology of Music, The Strad, American String Teachers Journal, and various state music education journals. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Research in Music Education, the String Research Journal, and as guest reviewer for the International Journal of Research in Music Education. She is the recipient of the UNCG School of Music, Theatre and Dance Outstanding Teaching Award, the American String Teacher Association National Researcher Award, and the UNCG Junior Research Excellence Award.

Memoir Plus: A Conversation on Hybrid Memoir
2022-05-20 17:00 - 18:00 | Scuppernong Books, 304 S Elm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
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**THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT**

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*

How can bringing other genres and forms into memoir enrich the text? How close must memoir adhere to the facts? What is a memoir, anyway? LAURIE STONE and ALEXIS ORGERA will use their own work to enlarge our idea of the genre and telling the story of our own lives. Hosted by STEVE MITCHELL.
You may also be interested in:
• $ WORKSHOP Down the Rabbit Hole of Your Own Life: A Creative Writing Lab with Laurie Stone
• Lost Mothers: Memoirs of Longing
• $ WORKSHOP Writing from the Body with Nicole Lungerhausen
• Lost & Found & Forgetting: Memoir as an Act of Moving Forward
• A Conversation with Ann Hood & Julia Ridley Smith

LAURIE STONE Laurie Stone is author of six books books including recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening (Dottir Press, 2022), Everything is Personal, Notes on Now (Scuppernong Editions, 2020), and My Life as an Animal, Stories (Northwestern University Press/Triquarterly Press, 2016). She was a longtime writer for the Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation, and critic-at-large on Fresh Air. She won the Nona Balakian prize in excellence in criticism from the National Book Critics Circle and two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has published numerous stories in such publications as n + 1, Waxwing, Tin House, Evergreen Review, Electric Lit, Fence, Open City, Anderbo, The Collagist, Your impossible Voice, New Letters, TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, and Creative Nonfiction. In 2005, she participated in “Novel: An Installation,” writing a book and living in a house designed by architects Salazar/Davis in the Flux Factory’s gallery space. She has frequently collaborated with composer Gordon Beeferman in text/music works. The world premier of their piece “You, the Weather, a Wolf” was presented in the 2016 season of the St. Urban concerts. Her next book will be The Love of Strangers, a collection of linked stories. Her website is: lauriestonewriter.com.
ALEXIS ORGERA is a poet-writer, book editor, and publisher living in North Carolina. She’s the author of two poetry collections in addition to Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms (Kore Press, December 2021). Her work can be found in literary magazines like the Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chattahoochee Review, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Indianapolis Review, Interim, Massachusetts Review, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast, and elsewhere. More at alexisorgera.com.
STEVE MITCHELL, a writer and journalist, has published in CRAFT Literary, entropy, december magazine, Southeast Review, among others. His novel, Cloud Diary, is published by C&R Press. His book of short stories is The Naming of Ghosts from Press 53. He has a deep belief in the primacy of doubt and an abiding conviction that great wisdom informs very bad movies. He’s co-owner of Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC.

Hell of a State: North Carolina's Literary Fire
2022-05-20 19:30 - 21:00 | Van Dyke Performance Space, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N Davie Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401, United States
Advanced registration for this event is closed. However, you may "walk-up" and register onsite.

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
2021 National Book Award winner and North Carolina native JASON MOTT is joined by award-winning author and Greensboro’s own HOLLY GODDARD JONES as they talk about their recent work and writing from the Old North State. North Carolina Writers Network director ED SOUTHERN will moderate the conversation. With a pre-conversation performance by COLIN CUTLER of songs inspired by the short stories of Flannery O’Connor.

JASON MOTT Bestselling author, National Book Award Winner, Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction Winner, Pushcart Prize nominee, and Carnegie Medals For Excellence Longlist nominee, Jason Mott has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is the author of two poetry collections and four novels. The Returned, Jason’s debut novel, was adapted for television and aired on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.” Jason’s fourth novel, Hell Of A Book, released in June 2021, was a Jenna Bush Hager “Read With Jenna” Book Club pick, Carnegie Medals For Excellence in Fiction Longlist selection, a 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist selection, a Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist selection, the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Prize for Fiction winner, and the winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.
HOLLY GODDARD JONES is the author of three previous books of fiction, including THE SALT LINE, THE NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME, and GIRL TROUBLE. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at UNCG.
ED SOUTHERN is the executive director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and the author of ‘Fight Songs: A Story of Love & Sports in a Complicated South,’ a finalist for the 2022 SIBA Southern Book Prize. His work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, storySouth, the North Carolina Literary Review, and elsewhere.
COLIN CUTLER is a Greensboro-based singer-songwriter, short story writer, and poet toting a banjo, guitar, and harmonicas, with his musical roots drawing from the breadth of Americana—from Appalachian oldtime to gospel to country to roots rock. He holds an MA in English from UNC-Greensboro, an MA in creative writing from York St. John University, has taken a NC Poetry Society Gilbert-Chappell mentorship and had short stories and poetry published in The York Journal, The Catholic Poetry Room, with honorable mention from NC’s poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green. He is currently working on an expansion of his Peacock Feathers EP into an album of songs based on Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and has performed for the International Flannery O’Connor Society and Andalusia Farm.

Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life
2022-05-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Stephen D. Hyers Theater, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N Davie Street, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
Three Asian-American authors use their work to discuss the rise in violence toward Asian-Americans while exploring the complex joys and responsibilities of writing and identity. With MICHAEL CROLEY, H’RINA DeTROY, and THIEN-KIM LAM. Hosted by SAYAKA MATSUOKA.
You may also be interested in:
• Immigration and Refugee Matters
• Afternoon Delight
MICHAEL CROLEY is the author of Any Other Place: Stories, winner of the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Weatherford Award. He is also the co-editor (with Jack Shuler) of Midland: Reports from Flyover Country. His reporting, stories, and essays have appeared in Esquire, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, VQR, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, LitHub, Narrative, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Denison University and is on the visiting faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

H’RINA DeTROY is a Montagnard American writer based in Brooklyn. She was the recipient of the 2020 Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Grant in Literature and a 2019 Emerging Writer Fellowship at Aspen Word in Memoir. Roxane Gay selected her essay entitled “The Vengeance of Elephants” for the 2017 Curt Johnson Prose Prize in Creative Nonfiction for December Magazine. She holds a Master of Arts in Journalism and MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College. She’s a teacher and working with the Montagnard Dega Association and the city of Greensboro, she created the ground-breaking workshop, “Apocalypse Never: Writing Our Origin Stories and Imaginative Futures as Montagnard Americans.” A contributing editor for DiaCRITICS, she focuses amplifying Montagnard and other indigenous, ethnic minority voices of Southeast Asian diasporas.
THIEN-KIM LAM writes stories about Vietnamese characters who smash stereotypes and find their happy endings. A recovering Type-Asian, she guzzles cà phê sữa đá, makes art, and bakes her feelings to stay sane. Thien-Kim is also the founder of Bawdy Bookworms, a subscription box that pairs sexy romances with erotic toys. She’s been featured on Jezebel, NPR, BBC America, and Glamour. Her debut novel Happy Endings is now available, and her forthcoming book will be released in 2022.

SAYAKA MATSUOKA is a freelance journalist and managing editor for Triad City Beat, an alternative weekly newspaper based in Greensboro covering the Triad. She was born in NY but raised in Greensboro. She writes mostly for the paper these days, about anything from cultural events and food to right-wing extremism and police brutality.

Writing Toward Justice: Non-Fiction as a Call to Action
2022-05-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Van Dyke Performance Space, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N Davie Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401, United States
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
Journalists and writers from different backgrounds discuss the importance of engaging equity, criminal justice, and community. The press, and citizen journalists, provide witness on systemic issues impacting local communities. A conversation with DR. BENJAMIN GILMER, WANDA SMALLS LLOYD and PHOEBE ZERWICK. Hosted by DEONNA KELLI SAYED. This panel is in partnership with the PEN America NC Piedmont Chapter.
You may also be interested in:
• Writing Toward Justice: Non-Fiction as a Call to Action
• An Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Images of Justice and Power
• Truth Tellers documentary presentation
BENJAMIN GILMER, MD, is a family medicine physician and medical educator. He is an International Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life and associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill and at the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC). A former neurobiologist turned rural family doctor, Dr. Gilmer has lectured widely about medical ethics, rural health, and the intersection of medicine and criminal justice reform. He is a passionate teacher of medical education and leads MAHEC’s Rural Health Initiative, a program to inspire and train students to pursue rural medicine. The Other Dr. Gilmer is his first book, resulting from a true story he told on This American Life with Sarah Koenig, now one of its most listened to podcasts. The story has inspired Benjamin to be an advocate for prison and mental health reform. He lives with his wife, Deirdre; their two children, Kai and Luya; and their dog, Prince Peanut Butter, in Asheville, North Carolina.
WANDA LLOYD parlayed her passion for storytelling when she transitioned from journalism to writing non-fiction. Her memoir, COMING FULL CIRCLE: From Jim Crow to Journalism, was published in 2020. The book is an engaging, charmingly written self-reflective volume of stories about growing up as an African American girl in the Jim Crow South, where despite her segregated circumstances, she dared to become a daily newspaper journalist. She not only became a journalist, but her career took her to some of the highest levels of newsroom positions, and included her work as an editor at The Washington Post and USA Today. She also launched and led university journalism programs as a way to prepare future journalists of color. When Lloyd retired after more than eight years as executive editor of the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama’s capital city, she accepted a position as associate professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Savannah State University. A newspaper editor for more than four decades, she now writes from her home in Savannah, Georgia, the city where she grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2020, Lloyd co-edited (with novelist Tina McElroy Ansa) MEETING AT THE TABLE: African-American Women Write on Race, Culture and Community, a collective of essays written after the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others. Lloyd and Ansa are also co-executive producers and co-hosts of the podcast, 2 Old Chicks Who Know a Lot of Sh*t! on Spotify and YouTube. Spelman College, her alma mater, awarded Lloyd an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2016. In 2019 she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
PHOEBE ZERWICK is an award-winning investigative journalist, narrative writer, and college teacher. Her writing has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine; National Geographic; The Nation; the Winston-Salem Journal; and Glamour, among other publications. Her work has been recognized by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia University, and the North Carolina Press Association and featured in the HBO documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt. She is the director of the journalism program at Wake Forest University.
DEONNA KELLI SAYED is an author, TEDx speaker, and performer based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her short stories and essays are featured in numerous online journals and anthologies. She is the PEN America North Carolina Piedmont Representative and works for the North Carolina Writers’ Network.

Sponsored by PEN America NC Piedmont Chapter

Whatever Wholeness Means: Poetry in an Age of Separation
2022-05-21 11:00 - 12:00 | Scuppernong Books, 304 S Elm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
This event is SOLD OUT.

**THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT**
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
From three unique perspectives, these poets offer witness, vulnerability, and fierce attention to the troubled and yet still exquisite times. With CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH, KAY ULANDAY BARRETT, and STUART DISCHELL. Hosted by MICHAEL GASPENY.
You may also be interested in:
• A Conversation on Publishing for People of Color
• Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life
• Authors with Disabilities panel

CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Routes Home, Finishing Line Press (2013) and Running Music, Longleaf Press (2014). She is also the author of Wildflowers: Haiku, Senryu, and Haibun (2016). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including: Callaloo, Nimrod, Barrow Street, Obsidian II: Literature in the African Diaspora, African American Review, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. She is an alumna of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the Yale Summer Writers Conference. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Durham, NC with her husband and two sons where she teaches English Composition and Creative Writing. She is the Managing Editor of Backbone Press.
KAY ULANDAY BARRETT is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have received fellowships from VONA Voices, Monson Arts, Macondo, and The Lambda Literary Review. They have featured at The United Nations, The Lincoln Center, The Hemispheric Institute, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Museum, Dodge Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, The School of the Arts Institute, Manchester PRIDE, Sesame Street, & more. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Academy of American Poets, Colorlines, Asian American Literary Review, The Advocate, Al Jazeera, NYLON, Vogue, The Rumpus, The Lily, VIDA Review, and elsewhere. Currently, they serve as a curator at The Asian American Writer’s Workshop.
STUART DISCHELL is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Standing on Z (Unicorn), Children with Enemies (Chicago), and the forthcoming The Lookout Man (Chicago). A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is the Class of 1952 Excellence Professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
MICHAEL GASPENY is the author of the novella in verse, The Tyranny of Questions (Unicorn Press) and the chapbooks Re-Write Men and Vocation. He has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition and the O. Henry Festival Short Fiction Contest. His novel, Postcard from the Delta, is forthcoming from Livingston Press. For hospice service, he has received The (North Carolina) Governor’s Award for Volunteer Excellence.

Upon Her Shoulders: Native Women and the South
2022-05-21 11:30 - 12:30 | Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
Mary Ann Jacobs

Cherry Beasley

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
With a focus on southeast Native women, Beasley and Jacobs share stories from an anthology they edited on justice, spirit, and community. With DRS. CHERRY BEASLEY and MARY ANN JACOBS. Hosted by ROBIN MIURA.
CHERRY BEASLEY, PhD, RN, FAAN is an experienced nurse stiving to impact the health of populations from rural settings, underserved area and indigenous communities. As an educator, her longest tenure at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Dr. Beasley, a native of Pembroke and an active member of the Lumbee Tribe, was the first nursing faculty member hired at UNCP and has been instrumental in the development and growth of nursing and health profession programs at UNCP, where she is the chief officer for the McKenzie-Elliott School of Nursing and the interim Dean of the College of Health Sciences. Dr. Beasley is a recipient of the coveted UNC Board of Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Dr. Beasley finds synergy in her research and service interests by focusing on health care decision making and health care behaviors of rural and/or minority populations. Dr. Beasley works extensively with populations in participatory community outreach and research to address health disparities and to improve the quality of health care in rural communities. She is using participatory methodologies to address poor health outcomes experienced by populations with excessive death and disabilities. Most recently her work has focused on the drives of health including poverty, empowerment, food sovereignty, and environmental justice, and disparities of health data. Her strongly committed to others understanding the value, culture and healthcare needs of rural, minority or underserved populations, led her being selected as the inaugural appointment as Anna Belk Endowed Professor for Rural and Minority Health. Dr. Beasley is the proud mother of a son, Zeb and his wife Katie, and a daughter, Mary-Joyce and her husband Brian. She is very excited to be the grandmother of five.
DR. MARY ANN JACOBS is an associate professor and chair of American Indian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She teaches courses with a focus on American Indian Studies, American Indian identity, education, and cultural competency. She was previously the director of American Indian Studies at California State University, Long Beach (1990–1996) and an assistant professor of social work at San Diego State University (2005–2007). Dr. Jacobs is the co-editor of one book and the author of several peer-reviewed articles, book sections, and reports dealing with American Indian women, STEM education for American Indian (AI) students, historical trauma, foster care, racial identity, Chicago’s AI community, AI lesbians and gays, child welfare policies for Indigenous children, and decolonizing methods. Dr. Jacobs, her husband, and children are enrolled members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Dr. Jacobs and her husband attend Mt. Airy Baptist Church in Pembroke.
ROBIN MIURA is Senior Editor and Associate Publisher at Blair and has worked in publishing for more than 20 years. She has worked with all types of books, but her passion is literary fiction and creative nonfiction. She is also a founding editor of the online magazine South Writ Large.

Exploring a Future, Changing the Past (Sci-fi/Fantasy)
2022-05-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Van Dyke Performance Space, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N Davie Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401, United States
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
Science Fiction and fantasy explore new worlds; some are light years away or hundreds of years in the future, some are new perspectives on our shared past. They can be intimate stories of a single person or sprawling narratives of an entire culture. Three writers talk about what drew them to the genre and what continues to thrill them. With MONICA BYRNE, T FROHOCK,and CADWELL TURNBULL.Hosted by JL HERNDON.
MONICA BYRNE is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who resides in North Carolina. Her first novel, The Girl in the Road, received the 2015 Otherwise Award, and her second novel, The Actual Star, was published in September 2021.
T FROHOCK has turned a love of history and dark fantasy into tales of deliciously creepy fiction. She is the author of Miserere: An Autumn Tale, and the Los Nefilim series from Harper Voyager. Her works, Where Oblivion Lives and Carved from Stone and Dream, were both short-listed for the Manly Wade Wellman award in 2020 and 2021 respectively. A native North Carolinian, T. has long been accused of telling stories, which is a southern colloquialism for lying.
CADWELL TURNBULL is the author of The Lesson and No Gods, No Monsters. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. The novel was also shortlisted for the VCU Cabell Award and longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. His latest novel No Gods, No Monsters was longlisted for the Pen Open Book Award. Turnbull lives in Raleigh and teaches at North Carolina State University.

JL HERNDON (he/him) 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, Inkwell Black, Visual Verse, and Serotonin. Originally from Texas, he now resides in Greensboro, NC with his wife and dog. You can find him lurking on Twitter @jl_herndon.

Lost Mothers: Memoirs of Longing
2022-05-21 12:00 - 13:30 | Stephen D. Hyers Theater, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N Davie Street, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
With ELISHEBA HAQQ and MEGAN CULHANE GALBRAITH. Hosted by LEE ZACHARIAS.
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• A Conversation with Ann Hood & Julia Ridley Smith
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ELISHEBA HAQQ was born in Chandigarh, India, but was brought up in Minnesota, USA. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and currently teaches writing at Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in A Letter for my Mother, Gateways, She.knows.com, and NJ Monthly. An RN by profession, she has also been published in Creative Nursing and Journal of Nursing Education and Practice.
MEGAN CULHANE GALBRAITH is a writer, visual artist, and adoptee. She is the author of The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, May 2021) a hybrid memoir-in-essays that pairs narrative with images to weave a personal and cultural history of adoption as it relates to guilt, shame, grief, identity, and memory itself. She connects her experiences to those of generations of adoptees, to the larger stories America tells about sex and motherhood, and to the shadows those stories cast on us all. She was named one of the “5 Over 50” by Poets & Writers in 2021. Her work was Notable in Best American Essays 2021 and 2017 and her writing and art have featured in BOMB, HYPERALLERGIC!, The Believer, Tupelo Quarterly, ZZYZYVA, Hobart, Longreads, Hotel Amerika, Catapult, and Redivider, among others. She has been awarded fellowships by The Saltonstall Foundation, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Horned Dorset Colony. Megan is a graduate of and the Associate Director at the Bennington Writing Seminars and the founding director of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont Young Writers Institute.

LEE ZACHARIAS is the author of a collection of short stories, a collection of essays, and four novels. Her third novel, Across the Great Lake, a 2019 Notable Michigan Book, won a silver medal in literary fiction from the Independent Publisher Awards, the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, the 2020 Philip H. McMath Book Award. Her fourth novel, What a Wonderful World This Could Be, was a finalist for the 2021 American Fiction Awards and has been chosen as a Distinguished Favorite by the 2021 NYC Big Book Awards and the 2022 Independent Press Awards.

A Conversation on Publishing for People of Color
2022-05-21 13:00 - 14:00 | Scuppernong Books, 304 S Elm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
With CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH and ASHLEY LUMPKIN.
You may also be interested in:
• Whatever Wholeness Means: Poetry in an Age of Separation
CRYSTAL SIMONE SMITH is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Routes Home, Finishing Line Press (2013) and Running Music, Longleaf Press (2014). She is also the author of Wildflowers: Haiku, Senryu, and Haibun (2016). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including: Callaloo, Nimrod, Barrow Street, Obsidian II: Literature in the African Diaspora, African American Review, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. She is an alumna of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the Yale Summer Writers Conference. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Durham, NC with her husband and two sons where she teaches English Composition and Creative Writing. She is the Managing Editor of Backbone Press.
ASHLEY LUMPKIN is a Georgia-raised, Carolina-based writer, editor, actor, and educator. She is the author of five poetry collections. A lover of performance as well as the written word, she has been a competing member of the Bull City Slam Team since 2015 and currently serves as its assistant coach. She is one-fifth (and only Slytherin member) of the Big Dreams Collective and currently serves on the board of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Above all else, Ashley considers herself a teacher, poet, and fryer of food. She is a lover of mathematics and language. She loves you too.

Everywhere We Belong
2022-05-21 13:30 - 14:30 | Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
Three award-winning Black authors bring their unique voices to bear on what it means to be black and male in 21st Century America. Whether writing about unknown facets of the Civil War, a father’s estranged relationship with his son, or an average kid growing up in Chicago, each offers keen insight on the struggles of the present and how the past comes to bear on that present. With DANIEL BLACK, GABRIEL BUMP, and DAVID WRIGHT FALADÉ.Hosted by GALE GREENLEE.
DANIEL BLACK is professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta University. A native of Kansas City, Kansas, yet spent the majority of his childhood years in Blackwell, Arkansas. He is an associate professor at his alma mater, Clark Atlanta University, where he now aims to provide an example to young Americans of the importance of self-knowledge and communal commitment. He is the author of They Tell Me of a Home and The Sacred Place.
GABRIEL BUMP grew up in South Shore, Chicago. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and has won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award. Bump is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
DAVID WRIGHT FALADÉ is a professor of English at the University of Illinois and a 2021-2022 Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. He is the co-author of the young adult novel Away Running and the nonfiction book Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, which was a New Yorker notable selection and a St. Louis-Dispatch Best Book of 2001. The recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award, he has written for the New Yorker, Village Voice, Southern Review, Newsday, and more.
GALE GREENLEE is a Greensboro native, freelance editor and independent scholar of African American literature. She was a visiting assistant professor at Berea College and the inaugural ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow at The Ohio State University. She holds a doctorate in African American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her work focuses on Black and Latinx girlhoods and social justice in kids and young adult literature. She recently served as a fellow with the African American Policy Forum’s Black Girls Matter project and has a forthcoming essay in a College Literature’s special issue, “Children, Too, Sing America.” As an aspiring children’s author, she’s currently writing about Black children and green spaces.
