Here are some notable literary events taking place around the Triangle during the week of 1/10 - 1/16:
RALEIGH
Saturday, January 11th at 2pm @ James B. Hunt Jr. Library (NC State University campus)
SOLD OUT EVENT
Quail Ridge Books and NC State Friends of the Library are proud to present two-time Newbery Medalist and #1 New York Times' Bestselling Author Kate DiCamillo. Kate will be presenting and signing her poignant new book Beverly, Right Here.
Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away. It’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mom, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t help forming connections with the people around her — and gradually, she learns to see herself through their eyes.
Kate DiCamillo is one of America’s most beloved storytellers. She is a former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and a two-time Newbery Medalist. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Florida and now lives in Minneapolis.
Tuesday, January 14th at 7pm @ Quail Ridge Books
Reserved seats and priority signing line ticket available with the pre-order of Big Lies in a Small Town.
“Two young women, both talented artists, separated in time by decades but connected spiritually through the painting and restoration of a mural. The attitudes of small town North Carolina in 1940 are central to the plot and Chamberlain nails them, from the quaint but innocuous to the most hateful and destructive. Diane's done it again!” -- Samantha at Quail Ridge Books
Diane Chamberlain is the bestselling North Carolina author of The Dream Daughter and Silent Sister among well over twenty other novels.
Tuesday, January 14th at 8pm @ So & So Books
What we eat, where it is from, and how it is produced are vital questions in today’s America. We think seriously about food because it is freighted with the hopes, fears, and anxieties of modern life. [Food Fights’] essays take strong positions [...] as they explore the many themes and tensions that define how we understand our food—from the promises and failures of agricultural technology to the politics of taste.
Matthew Morse Booker is associate professor of History at North Carolina State University. Booker’s first book Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History Between the Tides (California, 2013) details the transformation of that urban estuary from food producer to real estate. His current research explores the rise and fall of oysters as a staple food in American industrial cities.
Charles C. Ludington is teaching associate professor of history at North Carolina State University.
WAKE FOREST
Monday, January 13th at 12noon @ Page 158 Books
Page 158 Books welcomes author J.T. Ellison to discuss her new book Good Girls Lie with local author Barbara Claypole White.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison writes dark psychological thrillers and pens the Brit in the FBI series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in twenty-seven countries. She is also the Emmy Award–winning cohost of the premier literary television show A Word on Words.
Wednesday, January 15th at 7pm @ Page 158 Books
From bestselling author Diane Chamberlain comes an irresistible new mystery novel, Big Lies in a Small Town.
North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold.
North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. [...] She doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
Diane Chamberlain is the international bestselling author of twenty-four novels. She lives in North Carolina with her partner, photographer John Pagliuca, and her sheltie.
DURHAM
Tuesday, January 14th at 9am @ Durham Academy Lower School
Kelly Starling Lyons presents her new children's biography of Philip Freelon Dream Builder, and Vanessa Brantley-Newton presents her newest picture book Just Like Me.
Kelly Starling Lyons is the author of multiple award-winning picture books and chapter books, most recently Sing a Song: How "Lift Every Voice and Sing" Inspired Generations, illustrated by Keith Mallett, and the Jada Jones series, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton.
Vanessa Brantley-Newton is a self-taught illustrator, doll maker, and crafter who studied fashion illustration at FIT and children’s book illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is the author and illustrator of Grandma’s Purse and has illustrated numerous children’s books, including Sewing Stories by Barbara Herkert.
Thursday, January 16th at 7pm @ The Regulator Bookshop
The Regulator Bookshop welcomes Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove for a reading and signing in celebration of the launch of his new book, Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (MDiv, Duke Divinity School) is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He and his wife, Leah, founded the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham, North Carolina. Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham committed to "making surprising friendships possible," and is an associate minister at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church. Jonathan is the author or coauthor of more than a dozen books, including Reconstructing the Gospel, The Third Reconstruction, Strangers at My Door, Common Prayer, The Awakening of Hope, The Wisdom of Stability, The New Monasticism, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers.
CHAPEL HILL
Sunday, January 12th at 3pm @ Flyleaf Books
Featured poets Allen Stein and Tsitsi Jaji will each read for approximately 20 minutes. Then, after a short break for the readers to sign books, there will be a poetry open mic.
Monday, January 13th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books
North Carolina Arts Council 2019 literature fellowship recipients Sarah Bryan, Pam Baggett, Emilia Phillips, Marianne Erhardt, Danielle Spratley, and Jennie Malboeuf will read from their work
Tuesday, January 14th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books
This event is presented in partnership with the NAACP of Chapel Hill-Carrboro. From Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino comes a searing account of the Wilmington riot and coup of 1898, an extraordinary event unknown to most Americans.
In Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.
David Zucchino is a contributing writer for The New York Times. He has covered wars and civil conflicts in more than three dozen countries. Zucchino was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches from apartheid South Africa and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Africa, and inner-city Philadelphia. He is the author of Thunder Run and Myth of the Welfare Queen.
Wednesday, January 15th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books
JP Gritton’s portrait of a hapless aspirant at odds with himself and everyone around him is both tender and ruthless, and Wyoming considers the possibility of redemption in a world that grants forgiveness grudgingly, if at all.
JP Gritton's awards include a Cynthia Woods Mitchell fellowship, a DisQuiet fellowship and the Inprint Donald Barthelme prize in fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Southwest Review, Tin House and elsewhere.
Thursday, January 16th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books
Erica Witsell explores sisterhood with her new novel Give in conversation with Kate Rademacher, author of Following the Red Bird.
Every summer, Jessie and Emma leave their suburban home in the Central Valley and fly north to Baymont. Nestled among Mendocino's golden hills, with ponies to love and endless acres to explore, Baymont should be a child's paradise. But Baymont belongs to Laurel, the girls' birth mother, whose heedless parenting and tainted judgement cast a long shadow over the sisters' summers---and their lives.
Born in Maine but raised in Florida, Erica Witsell lived in Connecticut, California, Ecuador, and Italy before settling in the mountains of western North Carolina fifteen years ago.
PITTSBORO
Saturday, January 11th at 11am @ McIntyre’s Books
In lucid, engaging prose, Brian Lampkin tells the story of three black men wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Tarboro, North Carolina, who faced execution until Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center appealed the case and freed them. Lampkin’s own story twines with this one in subtle and surprising ways, as he meditates on racism, fear, culture, and parenthood.
Brian Lampkin lives in Greensboro, NC. He founded Rust Belt Books in Buffalo, NY and is an owner of Scuppernong Books in Greensboro where he also writes and performs with the band The Difficulties. He was a columnist with The Daily Southerner in Tarboro, NC.
Sunday, January 12th at 11am @ McIntyre’s Books
Come give Drew a birthday wish–or better yet, read him a Birthday Book on his special day! Drew completed special training through Pet Partners to become a therapy animal. During these special Read With Me sessions, Drew and his handler Miriam will be on hand so emerging readers can practice their skills.
