Join us on Tuesday, August 15th at 5:30 pm for an In Conversation event with author Meagan Lucas. She’ll be chatting about her collection of stories Here in the Dark. We’re excited to have Meagan in store with us and can’t wait to hear all about her writing processes and inspirations. So don’t miss out on this free event!

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Here in the Dark, the first collection from award-winning author Meagan Lucas, is a gritty genre blending wallop of short stories, set mostly in Southern Appalachia, that explore the female experience of lawlessness. In the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Bonnie Jo Campbell, Lucas tackles, with unsettling honesty: poverty, addiction, motherhood, and social justice in an increasingly troubled cultural climate. These are character-driven stories about crime, but less a who-done-it mystery and more a meditation on how the vulnerable navigate a world devoid of true justice. Unflinching in its gaze, Here in the Dark is an ambitious collection from a bold and empathetic storyteller.

Perceptive, intimate, and brave, these sixteen stories encompass shame and forgiveness, loss and redemption, oppression and revolution, and signal a new way of thinking about power and trauma. In “Voluntary Action,” a sheriff’s deputy witnesses the overdose of a high school friend in her custody. In “Buttons,” a little girl, bullied by the neighbor boy, gets her revenge with a needle and thread. In “Sitting Ducks,” a hurricane bears down on mothers, daughters, and sisters in an un-evacuated women’s prison. In “Asylum” an immigrant woman, suffering a terrible loss, sees ghosts in the hotel and houses that she cleans. In “Hell, or High Water” a young woman with Stockholm syndrome is abandoned by her kidnapper deep in the woods of Western North Carolina. And in “Here in the Dark,” a newly clean addict is given the opportunity to start over with her son if only she’ll snitch on her former lover and pimp, but discovers, of course, it’s not that simple. Blending Lucas’ musical prose with high-tension stakes, and resonant characters, Here in the Dark is a collection not to be missed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meagan Lucas is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (Main Street Rag Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection Here in the Dark (Shotgun Honey, 2023). Meagan has published over 30 short stories and essays in journals like The Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, MonkeyBicycle, Cowboy Jamboree, BULL, Pithead Chapel, and others. She is Pushcart, Best of the Net, Derringer, and Canadian Crime Writer’s Award of Excellence nominated and won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction. Her novel Songbirds and Stray Dogs was chosen to represent North Carolina in the Library of Congress 2022 Route 1 Reads program. Meagan teaches in the Professional Writing Program at Robert Morris University. She is the Editor in Chief of Reckon Review. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Meagan loves: pugs, bourbon, houseplants, and bookstores.

Reader’s choice! Discuss recent reads, favorite reads, and most anticipated upcoming books. Registration required. Email [email protected] or call 864-963-9031 to register

Join us on Wednesday, August 16th at 5:30 pm for an In Conversation event with author Dean King. He’ll be chatting about his book Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite.

“Comprehensively researched and compellingly readable” (Booklist, starred review), Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the towering environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.

Find out more and don’t miss this free event!

BOOK SUMMARY

In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life.
Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is devastated, Johnson, an arbiter of the era’s pressing issues in the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement.

“Comprehensively researched and compellingly readable” (Booklist, starred review), Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the towering environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dean King is an award-winning author of ten nonfiction books, including Skeletons on the Zahara, Unbound, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, and The Feud. His writing has appeared in Granta, Garden & Gun, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, New York magazine, and The New York Times. He is the chief storyteller in two History Channel documentaries and a producer of its series Hatfields & McCoys: White Lightning. An internationally known speaker, King has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, ABC’s World News Tonight, PBS’s American Experience, BBC Radio, Arte TV France/Germany, and at TEDx. For more info, visit DeanHKing.com.

Yoga is back at Headquarters! We have new instructors but the same low $2 fee for our fitness classes. This one’s suitable for all ages and abilities. You’re welcome to bring your mat with you, but if you don’t have one, a limited supply of community mats are available.

Celebrated Southern author George Singleton delivers a new collection of short fiction, brilliant and absurd, for fans of George Saunders and Tom Franklin.

A restaurant owner runs into trouble when his wife starts a well-intentioned, poorly named rooster rescue. A boy navigates his parents’ split between a stretched phone cord and a flooded septic tank. A drunk sequestered in the middle of nowhere wakes up to find a tractor parked in his driveway. And in a big Cadillac, a grandfather and a grandson and a wayward dog hit the road, searching for a life not downloadable, nor measured in bandwidth.

Loosely linked by characters and themes, The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs follows shysters and schemers, film buffs and future ornithologists, unlikely do-gooders, and the men who make up Veterans Against Guns in North America, all doing the best they can with what they possess in smarts and cunning. With Singleton’s signature comic flair, these stories peer through the peepholes of small-town South Carolina into the lives of everyday martyrs—prodigal sons, wayward fathers, and all those who are a little of each.

About the Author

George Singleton has published nine collections of stories, two novels, and a book of writing advice. Over 200 of his stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Story, One Story, Playboy, the Georgia Review, Zoetrope, Southern Review, Agni, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He’s received a Pushcart and a Guggenheim. The Curious Lives of Non- Profit Martyrs, published with Dzanc Books, is his latest collection of short stories. His first collection of essays, Asides, will be published by EastOver Press in November of 2023. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he lives in South Carolina.

Susan Beckham Zurenda, author of Bells for Eli, will be at the bookshop on Thursday, September 7th at 5:30 PM celebrating the launch of her newest book, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel! Explore the complex bonds between adults and teenagers and the power of the families we both inherit and create. Inspired by the author’s experiences teaching in a South Carolina high school, this novel is an unflinching, authentic look at the challenges faced by America’s public school teachers and the struggles of the thousands of homeless children in motels who live, precariously and almost invisibly, amid the nation’s most affluent communities.

About the Book

Impoverished high school junior Hazel Smalls and affluent senior Sterling Lovell would never ordinarily meet. But when both are punished with in-school suspension, Sterling finds himself drawn to the gorgeous, studious girl seated nearby, and an unlikely relationship begins. Set in 2012 South Carolina, the novel interlaces the stories of Hazel, living with her homeless family in the rundown Red Rose Motel; Sterling, yearning to break free from the expectations of his wealthy parents; and recently widowed Angela Wilmore, their stern but compassionate English teacher.

Hazel hides her homelessness from Sterling until he discovers her cleaning the motel’s office one morning when he goes with his slumlord father to unfreeze the motel’s pipes. With her secret revealed, their relationship deepens. Angela, who has her own struggles in a budding romance with the divorced principal, offers Hazel the support her family can’t provide.

Navigating between privilege and poverty, vulnerability and strength, all three must confront what they need from themselves and each other as Hazel gains the courage to oppose boundaries and make a bold, life-changing decision at novel’s end.

Gripping and richly drawn, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel explores the complex bonds between adults and teenagers and the power of the families we both inherit and create. Inspired by the author’s experiences teaching in a South Carolina high school, the novel is also an unflinching, authentic look at the challenges faced by America’s public school teachers and the struggles of the thousands of homeless children in motels who live, precariously and almost invisibly, amid the nation’s most affluent communities.

About the Author

Susan Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level to AP students. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli (Mercer University Press, March 2020; paperback edition March 2021), has been selected the Gold Medal (first place) winner for Best First Book—Fiction in the 2021 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards), a Foreword Indie Book Award finalist, a Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, a 2020 Notable Indie on Shelf Unbound, a 2020 finalist for American Book Fest Best Book Awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2021. She has won numerous regional awards for her short fiction. She lives in Spartanburg, SC.

The Rescue Brew Bash Benefitting Hub City Animal Project

A Wing and a Prayer is the story of a band of scientists, birders, hunters and ranchers working to save birds set against the loss of a third of North America’s bird populations in the past 50 years. Avid birders by avocation and veteran journalists by vocation, Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled over 25,000 miles in a refashioned Airstream, finding inspiring and encouraging rescue missions all across the hemisphere, but they also discovered how much more can and must be done to halt the dramatic declines. In this impassioned talk, they walk us through the steps any one of us can take to contribute to saving our imperiled bird populations.

Copies of A Wing and a Prayer will be available for purchase that evening through Malaprop’s Bookstore for the authors to sign. Participants can stay after to enjoy ArborEvenings in the garden!

Walk for Education? Let’s Move!!!

Upstate, Let’s Move —walk, run, cycle, dance—all in honor of UNCF, our students and schools. Join us live in Spartanburg for the South Carolina Walk and help UNCF raise funds to support our HBCUs and students.

Celebrate with your family, friends and coworkers. Let’s build better futures one step at a time.

The UNCF Walk for Education is a nationwide initiative to raise the critical funds UNCF needs to fulfill our mission of support to our member HBCUs and to help our students to become active participants of society through a high-quality education.

7:00 AM — Team Check-in & Registration
8:00 – 8:30 AM — Program & Warm-up
8:30 AM — Run/Walk Begins
9:30 AM — Walk Program & Awards