LIVE Candacy Taylor and The Historic Magnolia House
2021-05-16 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 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.
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
[“view event page” link below]

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
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.*

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.
You May also be interested in:
• Memoir Plus: A Conversation on Hybrid Memoir
• $ WORKSHOP Down the Rabbit Hole of Your Own Life: A Creative Writing Lab with Laurie Stone
• $ 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
•Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life
•Immigration and Refugee Matters

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.

Afternoon Delight
2022-05-21 14:00 - 15:00 | 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.*
Say goodbye to your mom’s harlequin bodice rippers, romance has gotten a makeover! From sleek new cover designs you actually want on your shelf (so long, busty corsets!) to rethinking what romance storytelling can mean, the new romance has become one of the fast-expanding genres, and with good reason. Romance authors are pushing the bounds of what’s possible, experimenting with form and structure in ways that were once reserved for “literary” novels and widening the view of whose love stories get to be told. Everyone deserves to be the hero of a smutty romcom, and that’s what this panel embodies: the new, inclusive face of romance and the authors pushing the genre onto bold new ground. Join us for a rip-roarin’ good time with CHERIS HODGES, TIMOTHY JANOVSKY, and THIEN-KIM LAM. Hosted by SHANNON JONES.
You may also be interested in:
• Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life

Award winning author CHERIS HODGES was bitten by the writing bug at an early age and always knew she wanted to be a writer. She wrote her first romance novel, Revelations, after having a vivid dream about the characters. She hopped out of bed at 2 A.M. and started writing. A graduate of Johnson C. Smith University and a winner of the North Carolina Press Association’s community journalism award, Cheris lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is a freelance journalist. She loves hearing from her readers. Follow Cheris on Twitter @cherishodges, friend her on Facebook at Cheris Hodges.
TIMOTHY JANOVSKY is a queer, multidisciplinary storyteller from New Jersey. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College and a self-appointed certificate in rom-com studies (accreditation pending). When he’s not daydreaming about young Hugh Grant, he’s telling jokes, playing characters, and writing books. Never Been Kissed is his first novel.
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
SHANNON PURDY JONES is co-owner of Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC. She holds a BS in Evolutionary Biology from Appalachian State University. Her reading life is a disaster zone of general fiction, sci-fi, romance, queer studies and science nonfiction. As a bookseller she doesn’t believe in book shaming or book snobbery, and wants everyone who walks into her shop to feel at home no matter what they’re reading.

The Truth about Disability: What We Don't Talk About
2022-05-21 14:00 - 15:00 | 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.*
Around 20% of Americans live with a disability, but for many disability remains a taboo subject. Too often, the complex experiences of the disabled are reduced to pity or inspiration. On this panel, three disabled authors of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction discuss their work and what we don’t talk about when we talk about disability. With EMILY MALONEY, KAY ULANDAY BARRETT, and JT HILL. Hosted by JT HILL.
You may also be interested in:
• Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice
• Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life
• Whatever Wholeness Means: Poetry in an Age of Separation
EMILY MALONEY is the author of COST OF LIVING (Henry Holt, 2022). Her work has appeared in Glamour, Virginia Quarterly Review, Best American Essays, and the American Journal of Nursing, among others. In addition to her work as an ER tech, she has worked as a dog groomer, horse trainer, pastry chef, general contractor, tile setter, and catalog model and sold her ceramics at art fairs. She has twice been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and lives in Evanston, Illinois.
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.
JT HILL 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.

$ WORKSHOP Down the Rabbit Hole of Your Own Life: A Creative Writing Lab with Laurie Stone
2022-05-21 14:00 - 16:00 | Tannenbaum-Sternberger Room, Greensboro Public Library, Central Branch, 219 N Church Street, Greensboro, 27401
In this one-session workshop/lab, writers will create a piece of creative writing prompted by a recent experience that may not at first seem dramatic. Writers will work to create a narrative voice that speaks directly to the reader. This voice layers time frames (I felt then, I feel now), and makes something ordinary seem strange or something strange seem ordinary. We will consider alternatives to conventional plots. How does a text build suspense and dramatic tension without moving toward the resolution of conflict? The writers WG Sebald, Chris Kraus, Adrienne Kennedy, David Shields, Sarah Manguso, John Haskell, Édouard Levé, and Richard Rodriguez come to mind as practitioners. We will discuss craft and form elements borrowed from music, visual art, and film: fugue structures, bricolage, collage, jump cuts, fades, montage, close-ups, long shots, and exploded moments. We will work with lists and blocks of text.

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.

You may also be interested in:
• Memoir Plus: A Conversation on Hybrid Memoir
• Lost Mothers: Memoirs of Longing
• $ WORKSHOP Writing from the Body with Nicole Lungerhausen
• A Conversation with Ann Hood & Julia Ridley Smith

County of Terror: Alamance in the 19th Century
2022-05-21 15:30 - 16:30 | Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
Jaki Shelton Green

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
You may also be interested in:
• An Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Images of Justice and Power
• Truth Tellers documentary presentation
•A Conversation on Publishing for People of Color
• Whatever Wholeness Means: Poetry in an Age of Separation

ALEX ALBRIGHT examines the reign of terror the Klan brought to Alamance County to undermine political gains by black people after the Civil War. The family of NC poet laureate JAKI SHELTON GREEN lived in Alamance at the time and suffered the white riotous rage.
ALEX ALBRIGHT A Graham native and UNCG alum, Alex taught for 37 years in the English Department at East Carolina University, where he founded the North Carolina Literary Review and served as director of creative writing. His 2013 book The Forgotten First: B-1 and the Integration of the Modern Navy was a finalist for a Montaigne Medal. He has received the R. Hunt Parker Award for contributions to North Carolina literature, the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, and, with his wife, Elizabeth, the Brown-Hudson Award for preserving folk and community traditions. He and Elizabeth operate Fountain General Store near their home in Fountain, North Carolina.
JAKI SHELTON GREEN ninth NC Poet Laureate, teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. She is an Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellows, author of eight books of poetry, and recently appointed as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the NC Museum of Art.
BRIAN LAMPKIN is an owner of Scuppernong Books and one of the founders of the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. He is the author of The Tarboro Three: Rape, Race, and Secrecy and performs with the band The Difficulties.

King of the Blues
2022-05-21 15:30 - 16:30 | 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.*
Greensboro Bound partners with the Carolina Blues Festival to bring an engaging conversation with DANIEL de VISÉ on the life and legacy of B. B. King. De Vise, whose previous book, Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, was a Greensboro hit, is a meticulous researcher and passionate lover of the blues, which makes him an ideal conversation partner for Blues Festival director ATIBA BERKLEY.
DANIEL de VISÉ is the author of the critically acclaimed Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show and The Comeback: Greg LeMond, The True King of American Cycling and a Legendary Tour de France, and coauthor of I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and has worked at the Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other newspapers. He lives in Maryland.
ATIBA BERKLEY is a former vocal performer & business manager whose interest in remaining close to the stage led him to the art of Sound Engineering almost two decades ago. He started HUMbl Media Svcs in a basement in the Glenwood neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina in 2001. He has since worked for numerous production companies and organizations and helped to produce some of the world’s largest public events as a freelancer & production team leader. These events include multiple Olympic Games, NFL Super Bowls, NBA events, NHL events, National commercials and Television Broadcasts. These experiences sparked in him a desire to share his unique and diverse skills with his local community. Atiba honed his skills to curate public cultural events. In his volunteer life Atiba donates his time as the President and Acting Executive Director of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. He manages the Carolina Blues Festival and numerous community and cultural programs. He has served on the programming committee for the both the National Folk Festival and North Carolina Folk Festival, Artist in Residency selection committee for Downtown Greensboro Parks, Inc, Logistics Coordinator for Greensboro Juneteenth Celebration, & Technical Director for This Community Sings at Carolina Theatre of Greensboro to name a few.

A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones
2022-05-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Harrison Auditorium, NC A&T, 1009 Bluford Street, Greenbsoro, NC, 27401
**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.*
A Conversation with NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES is the culminating event in the History Of Redlining In East Greensboro: Conversations About Our City’s Past And Present series. This keynote event for the F.D. Bluford Library series will take place as part of the 2022 Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine and creator of The 1619 Project will be in conversation with DR. JELANI FAVORS. Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of The 1619 Project, Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, and MacArthur Genius Award Winner. Dr. Jelani M. Favors is the Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor at N.C. A&T and the award-winning author of Shelter in a Time of Storm. Their conversation will be a wide-ranging discussion about Professor Hannah-Jones’ work to chronicle “the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act” and her latest book, The 1619 Project.
The History of Redlining in East Greensboro: Conversations About Our City’s Past and Present was created by F.D. Bluford librarians Carlos Grooms, Katie Kehoe, Harvey Long, and James Stewart at N.C. A&T State University in collaboration with Dudley High School, Greensboro Bound, and The Greensboro Public Library. Greensboro Bound, F.D. Bluford Library at N.C. A&T State University, and NC Humanities generously supported this project with funds.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark 1619 Project. The New York Times‘s 1619 Project commemorates the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in what would become the United States by examining slavery’s modern legacy and reframing the way we understand this history and the contributions of black Americans to the nation. Nikole’s lead essay, “Our Democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Nikole also has written extensively about school resegregation across the country and chronicled the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act. In 2016, Nikole Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization dedicated to increasing the ranks of investigative reporters of color.
DR. JELANI M. FAVORS is the Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor of History at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. In 2019, Dr. Favors released his first book entitled Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Shelter in a Time of Storm was the recipient of the 2020 Stone Book Award presented annually by the Museum of African American History in Boston, the 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award given yearly by the
Southern Regional Council and the University of Georgia Libraries, and it was one of five finalists for the 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize presented by the African American Intellectual History Society. Dr. Favors’ research and commentary have appeared in several publications and
media outlets, including CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, The Root, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Point, and The Conversation. Dr. Favors earned his Ph.D. in History and his M.A. in African American Studies from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with honor.

Images of Justice and Power
2022-05-22 11:30 - 12:30 | International Civil Rights Center & Museum, 134 SElm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
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.*
Three artists explore the representation of social justice activism and empowerment through photography and art, documenting the changing face of the social justice landscape and celebrating the success of a movement. With MALAIKA ADERO, ST. CLAIR DETRICK-JULES, and ROBERT SHETTERLY. Hosted by RODNEY DAWSON. **The ICRCM requires all guests to wear face coverings. View policy under “Museum Protocols”.** 4/5/22
Companion event: Truth Tellers documentary showing

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• An Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones
• A Conversation on Publishing for People of Color
MALAIKA ADERO, author of Vice President Kamala Harris: Her Path to the Whitehouse, A Black Woman Did That: 43 Groundbreaking, Bar-raising, World-Changing Women, and Up South, is a writer, editor, literary agent, and owner of Adero’s Literary Tribe, LLC, a book development company. She lives in New York City and Atlanta.
ST. CLAIR DETRICK-JULES, author of My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories from the Sisterhood, is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and Brown University graduate. She captures personal stories and intimate moments centering Black liberation, immigrant justice, and women’s rights. An Afro-Caribbean artist who remains rooted in her community, St. Clair grounds her work in radical love, joy and the knowledge that a more just world is possible. Her work has been featured in Allure Magazine, The Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Byrdie, and BuzzFeed News, among others.
ROBERT SHETTERLY is a self-taught artist living on the coast of Maine. Until 9-11 he was primarily a surrealist painter and printmaker. However, deeply distressed about the propaganda leading up to the Iraq War in 2003, he began a series of portraits he calls Americans Who Tell the Truth. There are now approximately 260 of them. They travel to schools , colleges, museums, libraries and churches all over this country teaching the necessity of courageous citizenship to close the gap between our ideals and our actions.

RODNEY DAWSON is the Curator of Education for the Greensboro History 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.

Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever
2022-05-22 12:00 - 13:30 | 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.*
With and introduction from Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. A viewing of the documentary film by Dr. Michael Frierson, a filmmaker and professor of media studies at UNCG. The movie follows the life and literary accomplishments of Fred Chappell, who is considered one of North Carolina’s most important writers. Chappell taught in UNCG’s creative writing program for more than 40 years and authored a dozen books of verse, two story collections, and eight novels. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002.
You may also be interested in:
• Whatever Wholeness Means: Poetry in an Age of Separation

RUTH DICKEY has spent 25 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art, and is currently the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

$ WORKSHOP Writing from the Body with Nicole Lungerhausen
2022-05-22 12:00 - 13:30 | Scuppernong Books, 304 S Elm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
As writers, we’re used to pulling from our conscious experiences, memories, and knowledge to inspire and create our work. Our bodies and the subconscious are also wise and rich resources for inspiration and for instilling a sense of joy, possibility, and permission in the writing process. In this workshop, we’ll use exercises focused on the five senses, breathwork, and theater-inspired movement to tap into the knowledge contained in our bodies and subconscious. You’ll walk away with new ways to bypass the internal critic, play and experiment, and find entry points for your writing, whether you’re drafting a new piece or revising existing work.

NICOLE LUNGERHAUSEN writes fantasy and science fiction, with a focus on stories that center hope and compassion, woman-identified characters, especially multi-generational narratives,
and non-romantic relationships. Nicole’s stories have been published by Abyss & Apex, Apparition Lit, Electric Spec, and Luna Station Quarterly, among others. Her writing was included in Abyss & Apex’s 2019 “Best
of” anthology, and received an honorable mention from Writers of the Future in 2020. Nicole’s latest work will be published by The Future Fire, a magazine of socio-political, feminist, and queer sci fi and fantasy, in June 2022.
A professional actor for 10+ years, Nicole takes a body-centered approach to writing, using sensory exercises, movement, and breath and voice work as part of the creative process. As a coach, she works with fiction and non-fiction writers to discover their voices and the stories they truly love to write, and with non-profits to create and tell stories about their work and why it matters. Nicole holds dual B.A.s in Creative Writing and Theater from San Francisco State University. She currently does her living, writing, and teaching in Greensboro, NC.

You may also be interested in:
• Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice
•Memoir Plus: A Conversation on Hybrid Memoir
•$ WORKSHOP Down the Rabbit Hole of Your Own Life: A Creative Writing Lab with Laurie Stone
• Lost Mothers: Memoirs of Longing
• A Conversation with Ann Hood & Julia Ridley Smith

Truth Tellers documentary presentation
2022-05-22 12:30 - 13:30 | International Civil Rights Center & Museum, 134 SElm Street, Greensboro, NC, 27401
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.*
What defines a great American? For artist/activist Robert Shetterly, it’s a citizen who courageously confronts issues of social, environmental and economic fairness. Shetterly has painted 250 portraits of such Americans, past and present, with a quote inscribed into the dark background. These Americans Who Tell the Truth have been exhibited throughout the United States for almost two decades. Truth Tellers is both a story of Shetterly’s art and activism and a history lesson in what it means to be a citizen of a democracy. In bringing Shetterly’s message to a wide audience, Truth Tellers will spark a national conversation on truth telling. **The ICRCM requires all guests to wear face coverings. View policy under “Museum Protocols”.** 4/5/22
Companion event: Images of Justice and Power with Malaika Adero, St. Clair Detrick-Jules, and Robert Shetterly

You may also be interested in:
• An Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones

Mysteries of Identity
2022-05-22 13:00 - 14:00 | Stephen D. Hyers Theater, 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.*
With JOHN COPENHAVER, VALERIE NIEMAN, and NICOLE ZELNIKER. These three novels skirt the edges of the mystery genre while taking on various considerations of identity. Gender expectations, LGBTQ concerns, and coming-of-age self-awareness all complicate the usual terrain of the mystery field. Hosted by JACOB PAUL.
JOHN COPENHAVER‘s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning (Pegasus), won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. Copenhaver writes a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight,” cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show, and is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and currently lives in Richmond, VA, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul. The Savage Kind (Pegasus) is his second novel.
VALERIE NEIMEN‘s new novel, In the Lonely Backwater, a YA/crossover suspense novel in the Southern gothic tradition, will be published by Regal House/Fitzroy Books in May 2022. To the Bones, her genre-bending folk horror/thriller about coal country, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry collections. She has published widely in journals, and has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A native of western New York, Nieman was a journalist and farmer in West Virginia. She holds degrees from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and recently retired as a creative writing professor at NC A&T State University.
NICOLE ZELNIKER (she/her) is a writer, activist, and managing editor at The Nasiona. She is the author of several books, including “Letters I’ll Never Send” and “Until We Fall.”
JACOB PAUL is the author of two previous novels, A Song of Ilan (Jaded Ibis, 2015) and Sarah/Sara (Ig, 2010), which Poets & Writers named one of 2010’s five best first fictions. His collaborations have led to the fine art books, Home for an Hour (Otherwise, 2014) and Feed Mayonnaise to Tuna (Otherwise, 2016). His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Western Humanities Review, Green Mountains Review, Massachusetts Review, Seneca Review, Mountain Gazette and USA Today’s Weekend Magazine as well as on therumpus.net, fictionwritersreview.com and numerocinqmagazine.com. He teaches creative writing at High Point University in North Carolina.

Immigration and Refugee Matters
2022-05-22 14:00 - 15:00 | Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, GREENSBORO, NC, 27401, United States
Advanced registration for this event is closed. However, you may "walk-up" and register onsite.

Professor Diya Abdo, a Palestinian woman whose grandmother once sought refuge in Jordan, saw the need for a more inclusive approach to help refugees arriving in America. In 2015, she started the Every Campus a Refuge program, which has since spread to six other universities in the US, providing free housing to refugees on campus, language tutoring, assistance with job searches, and an army of volunteers, many of whom are students in Guilford's ECAR minor. Photo taken April 5, 2018.

*All events are FREE, but we do ask that you please register so that we can monitor attendance and venue capacity.*
As the world continues to displace people in astonishing numbers, Abdo and Haqq bring the personal stories of individual lives effected by the continuing inhumane actions and responses to human suffering. With DIYA ABDO and ELISHEBA HAQQ. Hosted by DR. JOHN COX.
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• Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing, Racism, and Asian American Life
DIYA ABDO is the first daughter and granddaughter of Palestinian refugees born in their country of displacement, Jordan. A graduate of Yarmouk University, she earned master’s and doctorate degrees from Drew University. She is a full professor in the English department of Guilford College, where she founded the first chapter of Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), which aims to host global refugees. Diya is the recipient of several national community engagement awards, including the 2021 J.M.K. Innovation Prize for her work with ECAR. She lives in Greensboro, NC, with her partner, daughters, and cats.
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.

DR. JOHN COX is a professor of Global Studies and History at UNC Charlotte, where he directs the university’s genocide & human rights studies center. He has lectured and published widely on racism, genocide, human rights, and resistance.
