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Upcoming Literary Events 2/28 - 3/5

Posted Updated
The Spendid and the Vile By Erik Larson
By
Mara Mathews
, Quail Ridge Books

Here are some notable literary events taking place around the Triangle during the week of 2/28 - 3/5:

RALEIGH

The Queen Bee and Me By Gillian McDunn
Saturday, February 29th at 2pm @ Quail Ridge Books
The Queen Bee and Me is a heartfelt story about the sweetness and stings of middle-school friendship.
Gillian McDunn is the acclaimed author of Caterpillar Summer. She has lived in California, Missouri, and North Carolina, and is a fan of both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. She currently lives near Raleigh, NC, with her family.
Saturday, February 29th at 2pm @ So & So Books
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of the collections Dusk & Dust, Crash Course, In Bloom, (Dis)placement, and The Valley. His work has appeared in Boulevard, Shenandoah, The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He is the Interviews Editor for the EcoTheo Review, an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI, and a regular reviews contributor for [PANK] and Heavy Feather Review. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.
Jessica Q. Stark is a mixed-race, Vietnamese poet originally from California. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the latest titled Vasilisa the Wise (Ethel Zine Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Pleaides, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, is forthcoming with Birds, LLC. She writes an ongoing poetry zine called INNANET. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI and is a PhD student in English at Duke.
Hannah VanderHart lives and teaches in Durham, North Carolina. She has poetry and reviews published and forthcoming in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, RHINO Poetry and Southern Humanities Review. Her first full-length poetry collection, What Pecan Light, is forthcoming from Bull City Press in Summer 2020, and she is the reviews editor at EcoTheo Review.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz By Erik Larson
Sunday, March 1st at 2pm @ Jones Chapel at Meredith College
This is a ticketed event. Purchase your ticket here!
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.
Erik Larson is the author of five national bestsellers: Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm, which have collectively sold more than nine million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.
Sunday, March 1st at 2pm @ Quail Ridge Books
Hosted by poet Jo Taylor. The performing poets are Kay Bosgraaf, The Fence Lesson: Poems and Michael Hettich, To Start An Orchard: Poems.
Kay Bosgraaf’s latest collection of poems, The Fence Lesson, focuses in part on her growing up on a celery farm in western Michigan, an area near the shores of Lake Michigan and settled by Dutch immigrants. Greatly influencing her poetry are her experiences there, surrounded by more than one hundred relatives. This new book also includes poems with a socio-politico point of view, and poems about love and its complications.

Kay now lives in Durham, North Carolina. After a life-time of being a professor of English, she spends her time writing and teaching Creative Writing as an adjunct professor at area colleges and universities.      

Lola Haskins (author of How Small, Confronting Morning) about Michael Hettich’s To Start An Orchard: "Written, with extraordinary empathy, this is a book about vanishment: of dreams and fathers, of love and animals and birds. Look carefully at the glinting lights he paints. Like everything beautiful, they will be gone before you know it."

Michael Hettich was born in Brooklyn, New York. He lives with his family in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He has published over a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry, and his work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies.

Bloody Okinawa: The Last Great Battle of World War II By Joseph Wheelan
Wednesday, March 4th at 7pm @ Quail Ridge Books

A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle--the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign--the last of its kind.

This brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.

Joseph Wheelan is the author of nine previous books, including the highly-acclaimed books Terrible Swift Sword and Midnight in the Pacific. Before turning to writing books full time, Wheelan was a reporter and editor for The Associated Press for twenty-four years. He lives in Cary, North Carolina.

WAKE FOREST

Saturday, February 29th at 5pm @ Page 158 Books

Have you ever wondered how expressive and emotive writing can help reduce your stress and improve your quality of living? Come to Page 158 Books to learn more about the different writing techniques that can help you diminish your anxiety from a high school senior working on their senior project at Franklin Academy High School.

This is a stand-alone workshop with no prior obligations, but sign up is required via Sign Up Genius.
Sunday, March 1st at 2pm @ Page 158 Books

Have you ever wondered how expressive and emotive writing can help reduce your stress and improve your quality of living? Come to Page 158 Books to learn more about the different writing techniques that can help you diminish your anxiety from a high school senior working on their senior project at Franklin Academy High School.

This is a stand-alone workshop with no prior obligations, but sign up is required via Sign Up Genius.
Monday, March 2nd at 6:30pm @ Page 158 Books

Love trivia? Love travel? Page 158 Books is excited to partner with APA Publications to bring travel trivia with Becky Chateauneuf.

Our entertaining Around the World in Words trivia quiz event will appeal to literature and travel-lovers alike, with rounds of questions such as…

US & World Literature Classics • Literature and Landmarks • Where in the World - Cities • Where in the World – Natural Wonders

We’ll even have a round of questions covering your local area. Prize awarded to the winner!!!

DURHAM

The Common Wind By Julius S. Scott and Tacky's Revolt By Vincent Brown
Sunday, March 1st at 1:30pm @ The Regulator Bookshop

The Regulator welcomes authors Julius Scott and Vincent Brown for a reading and discussion. Scott and Brown will be joined in conversation by historian Julia Gaffield. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Co-sponsored by Duke's Forum for Scholars and Publics.

Julius S. Scott is Lecturer of Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Julia Gaffield is a historian of the early-modern Atlantic World. She is a professor at Georgia State University, with a Ph.D. in History from Duke.

Tuesday, March 3rd at 7pm @ The Regulator Bookshop

Free and open to the public.

The Regulator Bookshop welcomes Thomas Goldsmith, author of Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic, for a reading and signing with Laurent Dubois (Banjo) as conversant. This Community & Scholars event is co-sponsored by Duke’s Forum for Scholars and Publics.
Thomas Goldsmith is a journalist and musician. For more than 30 years, he has worked both in daily newspapers in North Carolina and Tennessee and as a freelance writer. He is the editor of The Bluegrass Reader.

Laurent Dubois is Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University who is a specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti.

Known around the world for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe Newberry is also a powerful guitarist, singer and songwriter. A longtime and frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, he sang with the 2016 Transatlantic Sessions, and at the Transatlantic Session's debut at Merlefest in 2017.

CHAPEL HILL

Food Fights: How History Matters to Contemporary Food Debates Edited By Charles Luddington and Matthew Booker
Monday, March 2nd at 7pm @ Flyleaf 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. Yet critiques of food and food systems all too often sprawl into jeremiads against modernity itself, while supporters of the status quo refuse to acknowledge the problems with today’s methods of food production and distribution. Food Fights sheds new light on these crucial debates, using a historical lens. Its essays take strong positions, even arguing with one another, 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.

Charles Ludington is teaching associate professor of history at North Carolina State University.

Matthew Morse Booker is associate professor of history at North Carolina State University.

Tuesday, March 3rd at 10am @ Flyleaf Books
The Clouds and The Birds by Aristophanes Featuring William H. Race, George L. Paddison Professor of Classics Emeritus

Join UNC-Chapel Hill faculty discussion leaders at Flyleaf Books for a robust discussion of classic texts, ancient to modern. This semester, we are hosting one to two sessions per book. Every participant will receive a copy of the book before the first session. Each reading group will meet on successive Tuesdays or Wednesdays from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. Due to the nature of the reading groups, refunds cannot be offered. Seats are limited to 20 participants, so sign up early to reserve your spot!

Tuesday, March 3rd at 4:30pm @ Flyleaf Books

Featuring Amelia Gibson, Assistant Professor of Information and Library Science

In the modern world we cannot avoid technology, but we can try to understand its effects on our society and culture. Join us for this spring’s interdisciplinary series of talks that explore the many ways technology is changing our lives, from the music we listen to, to the cars we drive, to the people we vote for, and much more.

All programs are held from 4:30-6:00 pm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill. Advance registrants can take advantage of our special FLYLEAF SEASON PASS and receive a discount on the purchase of all nine lectures.

Wednesday, March 4th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books

In a wide-ranging analysis, Jennie Ratcliffe shows how the ecological and climate crisis is, at its heart, a spiritual and moral crisis, and how the social, economic, scientific, technological, and spiritual conditions that have led to overconsumption, reliance on growth amid inequality, and violence to each other and the earth community, are interconnected.

Jennie M. Ratcliffe, Ph.D. is an environmental research scientist, a longtime Quaker, and activist. She has worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Universities of London and North Carolina, and other institutions for over 40 years.

Lucean Arthur Headen: The Making of a Black Inventor and Entrepreneur By Jill Snider
Thursday, March 5th at 7pm @ Flyleaf Books

Born in Carthage, North Carolina, Lucean Arthur Headen (1879–1957) grew up amid former slave artisans. [In his lifetime, Headen] earned eleven patents, most for innovative engine designs and anti-icing methods for aircraft. An equally capable entrepreneur and sportsman, Headen learned to fly in 1911, manufactured his own "Pace Setter" and "Headen Special" cars in the early 1920s, and founded the first national black auto racing association in 1924, all establishing him as an important authority on transportation technologies among African Americans. Emigrating to England in 1931, Headen also proved a successful manufacturer, operating engineering firms in Surrey that distributed his motor and other products worldwide for twenty-five years.

Though Headen left few personal records, Jill D. Snider recreates the life of this extraordinary man through historical detective work in newspapers, business and trade publications, genealogical databases, and scholarly works.

Jill D. Snider is a historian and writer in Chapel Hill, NC. She holds a BA in English and a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has for the past 40 years combined careers as a technical writer, analyst, and historian.

PITTSBORO

Wildland: A Novel By Rebecca Hodge
Saturday, February 29th at 11am @ McIntyre’s Books
Rebecca Hodge, Wildland​​​​​​​

When Kat Jamison retreats to the Blue Ridge Mountains, she’s counting on peace and solitude to help her make a difficult decision. Her breast cancer has returned, but after the death of her husband, her will to fight is dampened. Now she has a choice to make: face yet another round of chemotherapy or surrender gracefully.

But when lightning ignites a deadly wildfire, Kat’s cabin is cut off from the rest of the camp, separating [kids] Lily and Nirav from their parents. Left with no choice, Kat, the children, and the dogs must flee on foot through the drought-stricken forest, away from the ravenous flames. As a frantic rescue mission is launched below the fire line, Kat drives the party deeper into the mountains, determined to save four innocent lives. But when the moment comes to save her own, Kat will have to decide just how hard she’s willing to fight to survive–and what’s worth living for.

Wednesday, March 4th at 2pm @ McIntyre’s Books

Want some feedback on your writing? Got something you need to finish up? Something for work? Something for school? An idea for a novel you’d love to get started on? A work in progress you’d like to make more progress on? Join Steve Peha, a professional writer and writing coach, and co-author of the 9-time award-winning book, Be a Better Writer, from 2PM-5PM, and the first Wednesday of every month.

He’ll be here in the Literature room to help you any way he can with any type of writing or writing goal. This is casual, comfortable, creative, and compassionate support from a writer who loves nothing better than helping other writers write with greater ease and satisfaction.

Price: FREE

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