Greensboro Bound

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

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

Author Panel with Molly Dektar, Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne, and Carter Sickels
2020-07-11 19:00 - 20:30
Join us for a panel discussion with debut authors Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne and Molly Dektar, and Carter Sickels. Get your copies of Holding On To Nothing, The Ash Family, and The Prettiest Star at Scupperong Books!
HOW TO WATCH
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Meeting ID: 860 3238 6749
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ELIZABETH CHILES SHELBURNE, Holding On To Nothing
Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than tobacco fields, a bluegrass bar, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive.
In luminous prose, debut novelist Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne brings us a present-day Appalachian story in the tradition of Lee Smith, Silas House, and Wiley Cash, cast without sentiment or cliché, but with a genuine and profound understanding of the place and its people.

Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne grew up reading, writing, and shooting in East Tennessee. After graduating from Amherst College, she became a writer and a staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly. Her nonfiction work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and GlobalPost, among others. She is a graduate of Grub Street’s MFA-level Novel Incubator program, under Michelle Hoover and Lisa Borders, where Holding On To Nothing was workshopped. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband and four kids aged eight and under, any one of whom will be the death of her, depending on the day.
MOLLY DEKTAR, The Ashe Family
When a young woman leaves her family—and the civilized world—to join an off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this lush and searing debut novel.
At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins an intentional community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear.
Thrilling and profound, The Ash Family explores what we will sacrifice in the search for happiness, and the beautiful and grotesque power of the human spirit as it seeks its ultimate place of belonging.

Molly Dektar is from North Carolina and lives in Brooklyn. A graduate of Brooklyn College’s MFA program and Harvard College, she is the recipient of the Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Brooklyn College Scholarship for Fiction. At Harvard, she was the recipient of the Louis Begley Fiction Prize. The Ash Family is her first novel.
CARTER SICKELS, The Prettiest Star
Small-town Appalachia doesn’t have a lot going for it, but it’s where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he’s chosen to return to die. Six short years after Brian Jackson moved to New York City in search of freedom and acceptance, AIDS has claimed his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape. The Prettiest Star is told in a chorus of voices: Brian’s mother Sharon; his fourteen-year-old sister, Jess, as she grapples with her brother’s mysterious return; and the video diaries Brian makes to document his final summer.
This is an urgent story about the politics and fragility of the body, of sex, and shame. Above all, Carter Sickels’s stunning novel explores the bounds of family and redemption. It is written at the far reaches of love and understanding, centering on the moments where those two forces stretch toward each other and sometimes touch
Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star, forthcoming with Hub City Press in 2020. His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury 2012), an Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His essays and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Guernica, and the Bellevue Literary Review. Carter is the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award, and earned fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. He is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University.

Reading and Q&A with Lora Beth Johnson, YA author of The Goddess in the Machine
2020-07-09 19:00 - 20:00
Join Scuppernong Books for a virtual reading of one of the hottest sci-fi YA releases of the summer with debut author LORA BETH JOHNSON and her novel Goddess in the Machine. She will be joined in conversation by SCOTT REINTGEN, author of the Nyxia series and Ashlords. Get your copy of Goddess in the Machine at Scuppernong Books!
How to Watch
Zoom.us/join
Meeting ID: 841 2282 4166
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LORA BETH JOHNSON, Goddess in the Machine

HEN ANDRA WAKES UP, SHE’S DROWNING.
Not only that, but she’s in a hot, dirty cave, it’s the year 3102, and everyone keeps calling her Goddess. When Andra went into a cryonic sleep for a trip across the galaxy, she expected to wake up in a hundred years, not a thousand. Worst of all, the rest of the colonists— including her family and friends—are dead. They died centuries ago, and for some reason, their descendants think Andra’s a deity. She knows she’s nothing special, but she’ll play along if it means she can figure out why she was left in stasis and how to get back to Earth.
Zhade, the exiled bastard prince of Eerensed, has other plans. Four years ago, the sleeping Goddess’s glass coffin disappeared from the palace, and Zhade devoted himself to finding it. Now he’s hop- ing the Goddess will be the key to taking his rightful place on the throne—if he can get her to play her part, that is. Because if his people realize she doesn’t actually have the power to save their dying planet, they’ll kill her.

With a vicious monarch on the throne and a city tearing apart at the seams, Zhade and Andra might never be able to unlock the mystery of her fate, let alone find a way to unseat the king, espe- cially since Zhade hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with Andra. And a thousand years from home, is there any way of knowing that Earth is better than the planet she’s woken to?

As an only child, Lora Beth Johnson grew up telling herself stories and reading past her bedtime. She spent her adulthood collecting degrees, careers, and stamps in her passport before realizing her passion for creating fictional worlds. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching college Eng
lish and learning new languages. She lives in Davidson, NC with her little roommate, Colocatire the Yorkipoo. Goddess in the Machine is her first book.
SCOTT REINTGEN is the author of scince fiction and fantasy books. He wrote the Nyxia trilogy, as well as Saving Fable, Escaping Ordinary (Fall 2020), Ashlords and Bloodsworn (2021). He began his career as an English and Creative Writing teacher in North Carolina. He strongly believes that every student who steps into the classroom deserves to see themselves, vibrant and victorious and on the page. It’s his hope to encourage a future full of diverse writers. He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife Katie and his two boys, Henry and Thomas.

A Conversation with Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League
2020-06-26 19:00 - 20:00
Join us for a conversation with Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League. Get your copy at Scuppernong Books!
HOW TO WATCH
Zoom.us/join
Meeting: 848 7910 7458
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EMILY NEMENS, The Cactus League
Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, and he’s coming apart at the seams. Moviestar handsome, paparazzi famous, and spectacularly talented, Goodyear is stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. As the weeks before the season crawl on, and Goodyear’s cracks begin to show, the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out what, exactly, is wrong with their star player—as they hide secrets of their own.
Humming with the energy of a ballpark before the first pitch, Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League unravels the tightly connected web of people behind a seemingly linear game. Narrated by a wisened sportscaster, Goodyear’s story is interspersed with tales of Michael Taylor, a batting coach trying to stay relevant; Tamara Rowland, a resourceful spring-training paramour, looking for one last catch; Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent grappling with his decline; and a plethora of other richly drawn characters, all striving to be seen. As Opening Day approaches and Goodyear’s secrets emerge, he risks taking down not only himself, but everyone around him.
Anchored by an expert knowledge of baseball’s inner workings, The Cactus League is a propulsive and deeply human debut that captures a strange desert world both exciting and unforgiving, where the most crucial games are the ones played off the field.
Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2020.
In 2018, Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. Since her arrival, the magazine has seen record-high circulation, published two anthologies, produced a second season of its acclaimed podcast, and won the 2020 National Magazine Award for Fiction. Previously, she coedited The Southern Review, a storied literary quarterly published at Louisiana State University. Stories published during her tenure at The Southern Review were selected for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize anthology, and the inaugural edition of PEN America Best Debut Fiction.
Nemens grew up in Seattle and received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where she studied art history and studio art. She completed an MFA degree in fiction at Louisiana State University. As an illustrator, she’s collaborated with Harvey Pekar, published her work in The New Yorker, and her watercolor portraits of every woman in congress were featured across the web and on national TV. Her short stories have appeared in Blackbird (Tarumoto Prize winner), Esquire, n+1, The Iowa Review, Hobart, and The Gettysburg Review. She lives in New York and remains a Mariners fan.

Crimson Letters: Voice from Death Row, Tessie Castillo with special guest Dr. Robert A. Brown and co-author George Wilkerson
2020-06-25 16:00 - 17:30
Join us in a critical four-part conversation on criminal justice and death penalty reform, racial and socio-economic inequality, and quite simply, the human dignity that each of us deserves.
Each of Tessie’s four co-authors and a special guest will join us for a live call-in four successive events.

How to Watch
Visit zoom.us
Meeting ID: 854 7826 3169
Password: [REDACTED]

JUNE 25

Topic: Racial Justice and Defunding Police: What It Is (and Isn’t)
Discussion: The Minneapolis City Council recently announced its intention to defund and dismantle the police department. Other cities have announced plans to defund police. What does it mean to defund police? What are the potential benefits and drawbacks? How might defunding police fit into the goals of broader racial justice reform across the US? We will discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of defunding police, as well as why racial justice is a necessary precursor to any type of criminal justice reform. Lastly, we will set out a blueprint for what people of all backgrounds can do to raise consciousness and support anti-racism efforts.
Special Guest: Dr Robert A. Brown, Chair in the Department of Criminal Justice at North Carolina Central University + co-author George Wilkerson.

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

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

ROBERT A. BROWN is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at North Carolina Central University. Prior to earning his doctorate, he worked as a sentencing mitigation specialist for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA) coordinating offender-specific rehabilitation and supervision plans for offenders at the state and federal levels. Dr. Brown’s research focuses on street-level interactions between police officers and citizens (e.g., citation, arrest, use of force), the influence of race and gender (of officials and offenders) on criminal justice processing, and the impact of intermediate sanctions and problem-solving courts on rehabilitation and criminal justice processing.

GEORGE WILKERSON is an award-winning writer, artist, and poet currently incarcerated on North Carolina’s Death Row. In 2018 he was a PEN award for his essay LimpGreyFur, was a finalist for the Cathy Smith Bowers chapbook contest, and won a Gold Award in the “Capitalizing on Justice” Art Competition. In addition to being the editor for Compassion, a newsletter for people on Death Row, his work has appeared on multiple philanthropic platforms and exhibitions, including Hidden Voices, The Upper Room, The Marshall Project, Windows on Death Row, the Correction Accountability Project, and LifeLines Collective. In 2019 he was a finalist for an Ellie Award

Scuppernong Books YA Book Club (June)
2020-06-21 15:00 - 17:00
This month’s selection: I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver
Zoom Event Link

Slave Narratives with James Shields and William Andrews
2020-06-19 19:00 - 20:00
A special peformance by James Shields as Frederick Douglass, followed by a conversation with William Andrews, author Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony 1840-1865. Get your copy of at Scuppernong Books!
How to Watch
Meeting ID: 869 0798 5143
Password: [REDACTED]
JAMES SHIELDS is the Director of the Bonner Center for Community Service and Learning at Guilford College, where he earned his undergraduate degree in History and African American studies. His interest in the Underground Railroad dates back to his days as a student of noted Guilford professor Dr. Adrienne Israel. For over 15 years he has given numerous presentations on the Underground Railroad to local schools and civic groups. James also serves as one of the lead guides for Underground Railroad tours conducted on the Guilford College campus. He is well known for his work as an actor and director in the drama produced by Snow Camp Outdoor theatre, Pathway to Freedom which depicts the local history of the Underground Railroad. His latest project is a one man show depicting the life of Frederick Douglass.
WILLIAM L. ANDREWS is E. Maynard Adams Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also served as Chair of the Department of English and later Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities. His most recent book is Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840-1865 (Oxford University Press, 2019). A co-editor of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Bill Andrews has authored or edited more than 45 books on a wide range of African American literature and culture. In 2018 the American Literature Society of the Modern Language Association conferred on Bill the Jay B. Hubbell Medal for lifetime achievement in the study of American Literature.

Crimson Letters: Voice from Death Row, Tessie Castillo with special guest Dr. Frank Baumgartner and co-author Terry Robinson
2020-06-16 16:00 - 18:00
Join us in a critical four-part conversation on criminal justice and death penalty reform, racial and socio-economic inequality, and quite simply, the human dignity that each of us deserves.
Each of Tessie’s four co-authors and a special guest will join us for a live call-in four successive events.
How to Watch
Visit zoom.us
Meeting ID: 858 3167 8194
Password: [REDACTED]

JUNE 16
Topic: Should Police Who Kill Unarmed Civilians Get the Death Penalty?
Discussion: In the aftermath of the murders of Ahmaud Aubrey and George Floyd at the hands of police and armed vigilantes, some people (including the victims’ families) have called for the death penalty. Is this justice? We will discuss how the capital punishment system actually works (which is very different than how most people think it works), explaining the flaws and brokenness within the death penalty system that make it an unjust system of punishment, regardless of who is on the receiving end of the sentence.
Special Guest: Dr. Frank Baumgartner, Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill and Author of Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty + co-author Terry Robinson

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 Dr. Baumgartner’s Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty, 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.

Dr. FRANK BAUMGARTNER is known for his work on lobbying, policymaking, agenda-setting, and racial dynamics in the criminal justice system. He has published scores of articles in the major political science journals, and had held various offices in numerous political science associations. He regularly teaches classes at all levels ranging from large lectures to small graduate and undergraduate seminars and contributes to UNC in various service capacities, with a particular focus on faculty diversity.

TERRY ROBINSON, also known as Chanton, is incarcerated on North Carolina’s Death Row. He is a proponent for social justice and a voice against recidivism. Chanton has a passion for learning and is dedicated to reform. He participated Toast Masters, Psychology, Drama, and other classes to improve his social skills. When not writing stories to challenge the stereotype of people on Death Row, Chanton unwinds in the pages of fantasy books or hosts Dungeons and Dragons roll-playing games. He is currently working on an urban fantasy novel and his memoir.
His writing can be found on the blog Walk In Those Shoes.

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
Join us in a critical four-part conversation on criminal justice and death penalty reform, racial and socio-economic inequality, and quite simply, the human dignity that each of us deserves.
Each of Tessie’s four co-authors and a special guest will join us for a live call-in four successive events.
How to Watch
Visit zoom.us
Meeting ID: 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
To join, visit zoom.us >> join meeting
Meeting: 859 2234 7659
Password: [REDACTED]

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
To join, visit zoom.us >> join meeting
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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