Greensboro Bound

Crimson Letters: Voice from Death Row, Tessie Castillo with special guest Sister Helen Prejean, and co-author Lyle May
2020-06-11 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | ZOOM
Join us in a critical four-part conversation on criminal justice and death penalty reform, racial and socio-economic inequality, and quite simply, the human dignity that each of us deserves.
Each of Tessie’s four co-authors and a special guest will join us for a live call-in four successive events.
How to Watch
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Meeting ID: 854 7826 3169
Password: [REDACTED]

JUNE 11
Topic: Why is it so hard to hold criminal justice actors accountable?
Discussion: It seems like criminal justice actors (law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges) often aren’t held to the same standards of accountability as ordinary citizens. Are they really operating on different rules? In this discussion we will explain how some policies and loopholes in the criminal justice system protect its actors from being held to the same standards of justice that they implement. We will also discuss what ordinary citizens can do to fight back against these protections and increase accountability within the criminal justice system.
Special Guest: Sister Helen Prejean, longtime advocate for death penalty and criminal justice form, and champion and friend of death row inmates + co-author Lyle May

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

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

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty. She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s vigorous opposition to all executions. After witnessing the executions of Patrick Sonni,er and Robert Lee Willie, Sister Helen realized that this lethal ritual would remain unchallenged unless its secrecy was stripped away, and so she sat down and wrote a book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Dead Man Walking hit the shelves when national support for the death penalty was over 80% and, in Sister Helen’s native Louisiana, closer to 90%. The book ignited a national debate on capital punishment and it inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play and an opera. Sister Helen also embarked on a speaking tour that continues to this day. Sister Helen works with people of all faiths and those who follow no established faith, but her voice has had a special resonance with her fellow Catholics. Sister Helen continues her work, dividing her time between educating the public, campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. Sister Helen’s second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, was published in 2004; and her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, in 2019.

LYLE MAY is a prisoner on North Carolina’s Death Row who is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Specialized Studies degree through Ohio University. He has been published in Scalawag Magazine, J Journal, The Marshall Project, Copper Nickle, and PrisonWriters.com. When he is not studying or pursuing criminal justice reform, Lyle is challenging the narrative about people on Death Row. To view more of his writing go to: www.beyondsteeldoors.com Check out his memoir, Waiting for the Last Train.

Melanie Conklin, YA author of Every Missing Piece, Book Release E-Party “at” Scuppernong Books
2020-05-26 19:00 - 21:00
Join Greensboro Bound author Melanie Conklin for our Zoom release party for her newest novel “Every Missing Piece.”
“Maddy Gaines sees danger everywhere she looks: at the bus stop, around the roller rink, in the woods, and (especially) by the ocean. When Maddy meets a mysterious boy setting booby traps in the North Carolina woods, she suspects the worst. Maddy is certain she’s found Billy Holcomb–the boy who went missing in the fall. Except, maybe it’s not him. It’s been six months since he disappeared. And who will believe her anyway? Definitely not her mom or her stepdad . . . or the chief of police. As Maddy tries to uncover the truth about Billy Holcomb, ghosts from her own past surface, her best friend starts to slip away, and Maddy’s world tilts once again. Can she put the pieces of her life back together, even if some of them are lost forever?”
Set in Summerfield, NC, this is the perfect middle grade summer read. Great event for parents and middle schoolers to kick off summer reading! We’ll see you there!
Facebook event link
HOW TO WATCH
ZOOM Meeting link

Guilford County Schools Poet Laureate Reading
2020-05-21 19:00 - 20:30
2020 marks the 17th year of a unique and remarkable community partnership within Guilford County Schools and supported by Greensboro Bound, Greensboro’s Literary Festival, in recognizing and encouraging the writing and appreciation of poetry by High School students. This year 13 schools participated in this county-wide poetry contest. Each school holds a local contest, and then submits finalists for selection of a Poet Laureate. The finalist submissions were judged and Poets Laureate selected by Dr. Wayne Johns, poet and professor at Greensboro College.
One of the most rewarding and valuable elements of The High School Poet Laureate Project is the connection it creates among young writers throughout the district. In a typical year, this would be done through workshops and readings scheduled to bring the participants together, but this is no typical year. In place of in person meetings, all laureates, finalists and interested writers have gathered in a Canvas course for introductions, writing prompts and planned virtual poetry readings.
2020 High School Poets Laureate:
Jada Stewart, Andrews High School
Imani Neal, Dudley High School
Cate Gwinnett, Greensboro Day School
Noah Houser, Grimsley High School
Isaac Brannon, Middle College at GTCC
Bles Cil, Northeast Guilford High School
Ana Santos, Northern Guilford High School
Gray, Northwest Guilford High School
Ashoy Wynter, Page High School
Martin Broadbelt, Ragsdale High School
Arshi Das, The STEM Early College and NC A&T
Christin Maxx Wright, Weaver Academy
Evie Lee, Western Guilford High School
HOW TO WATCH
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Meeting: 859 2234 7659
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A Conversation with Casey Cep
2020-05-16 19:00 - 20:00
Join us Saturday, May 16th at 7:00PM as we talk with Casey Cep, author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Penguin Random House). Get yourself a copy in advance Scuppernong Books !
Furious Hours tells the jaw-dropping true-crime story of a small-town preacher accused of killing five of his family members for the insurance money, about the vigilante who shot him, and about the lawyer who defended them both. Having helped report on In Cold Blood with childhood friend Truman Capote, Harper Lee had a template for the story she wanted to tell—and being who she was, she saw in this almost tabloid-tale a parable about race and criminal justice. In the years after To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee tried to write this story, but it never came to fruition. Casey Cep picks up where Lee left off and shares with us an account of three very different American lives, including that of Harper Lee herself, and how they briefly but spectacularly intersected.
Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her first book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and is available in hardcover, as an e-book, and as an audiobook. A proud graduate of the Talbot County Public Schools, she has an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she still lives with her family.
HOW TO WATCH
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Meeting: 863 1406 4508
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Lee Smith - A Life In Writing
2020-05-10 16:00 - 17:30
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Join North Carolina literary eminence Lee Smith Sunday, May 10 at 4:00PM as she talks about her writing life and her new novella, Blue Marlin (Blair). New York Times best-selling author Lee Smith brings her masterful storytelling magic to this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous 13-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s affair.
Born in the small coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, LEE SMITH began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and, most recently, Guests on Earth. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal Crowther.
Zoom Meeting ID: 840-5360-9210
Password: [REDACTED]
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