Events Calendar

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.

CornerFocus cordially invites you to tee off at the 1st Annual Triple-P Golf Tournament held at the premiere Club at Brookstone on August 23, 2023.

$125 donation
Each golfer plays 18 holes of golf and includes a cart, lunch, door prizes, boxing memorabilia auction, 1st and 2nd place, longest drive and closest to pin awards.

Proceeds are applied to the CornerFocus ‘Triple-P’ program. Helping at-risk youth athletes Prepare for success, Protecting them physically, and Performing to their full potential.

Registration Deadline: August 9, 2023

Special Guest – Al Bernstein
Al Bernstein is best known to a national audience as the voice of boxing, first for ESPN, and now for Showtime. He has achieved success in television, movies, and as a live stage performer. As Ambassador for CornerFocus, he is passionate about fostering the values of safety and responsibility to next generation’s athletes.

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 oldest and most common advice poets hear is “show don’t tell.” But what does that mean, exactly? What is the difference between showing and telling? Why is “showing” better? Most of us write poems to tell readers something, to share our ideas. Many poets—from as far back as John Donne to as recent as Stephen Dunn–do a lot of telling in their poems. So why are we always advised not to tell? In this workshop we will discuss these questions. In the process, we will look at a few well-known poems to see how–or if—they show rather than tell, and we will do some writing exercises that may help us arrive at some conclusions about this persistent advice.

This workshop is open to writers of all skill levels and is a fun way to find inspiration from a new prompt or revise current work. It is hosted by the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and will use Microsoft Teams for the virtual connection. Sign up to attend the workshop at workshop link

Eric Nelson’s most recent poetry collection, Horse Not Zebra, won both a Da Vinci Eye Award for cover art and an Honorable Mention in Poetry from the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awarda. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The Sun, The Oxford American, and The Missouri Review. Among his awards are the 2014 Gival Press Poetry Book Award for Some Wonder; the 2004 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Award for Terrestrials, chosen by Maxine Kumin; the Arkansas Poetry Award for The Interpretation of Waking Life (1991); the Split Oak Press Chapbook Award for The Twins (2009); the Georgia Author of the Year Award (2005), and fellowships to the Hambidge Center for the Arts and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He taught writing and literature courses at Georgia Southern University for twenty-six years before retiring in 2015 and moving to Asheville, where he lives with his wife, Stephanie Tames, and teaches in the Great Smokies Writing Program. www.ericnelsonpoet.com.

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!

Local band The Grateful Brothers announces their upcoming benefit concert in support of the nonprofit organization Loaves & Fishes. The event will take place on September 15th at The Radio Room, one of the city’s premier live music venues. Doors will open at 7:00
PM, with the show starting at 8:00 PM.
Proudly presented by The Radio Room Greenville, this year’s lineup includes The Grateful Brothers, and Matt Fassas Trip.
The Grateful Brothers is a highly regarded band known for their captivating performances paying homage to two legendary rock bands, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers. This special concert will showcase their exceptional musical talent while raising funds and awareness for a worthy cause.
Doors open at 7:00 PM, and the show starts at 8:00 PM. Tickets available now. $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
There are a LOT of fun and philanthropic events in Greenville, but “if you get confused, just listen to the music play.” like The Grateful Dead said.
Attendees can look forward to an evening of soulful music, vibrant energy, and an opportunity to support a worthwhile cause. In addition to the concert, there will be various opportunities for patrons to contribute to Loaves & Fishes, including a raffle and t-shirt sales.
“We’re thrilled to bring this show together with The Radio Room and Loaves & Fishes! We have a wonderful community around this band, and this is a great opportunity to bring us all together to give back to the local community and fight food insecurity in Greenville while enjoying a killer night of live music. Truly a win-win!” says Zach Thigpen, singer and guitarist of The Grateful Brothers.
“We’re excited to team up for another great event of Rock Out Hunger with Loaves & Fishes, because food rescue is something that we’re all passionate about. We’re currently in our 13th year as a business, and this will be our 2nd event with Loaves & Fishes, and we hope for many more to come”, says Wes Gilliam, a co-owner of the Radio Room in Greenville, SC, as well as a founder of the Upstate Music Awards. He is a proud husband and father and a longtime supporter of Loaves & Fishes.
“Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.”- Jerry Garcia
Proceeds from Rock Out Hunger will be put to immediate use this year rescuing food in Greenville

Part of the event series: Small Business Development Center Training

Meet with us at the bookshop on Tuesday, September 19th at 6:00 pm for a conversation on river conservation and how these powerful waterways provide much more than just drinking water and recreation. Sally Sierer Bethea will be in conversation with Rebecca Wade of Upstate Forever to discuss Bethea’s book, Keeping the Chattahoochee: Reviving and Defending a Great Southern River.  Don’t miss out on this evening discussing over 20 years worth of river conservation stories both entertaining and even alarming.

About the Book: 

Sally Sierer Bethea was one of the first women in America to become a “riverkeeper”—a vocal defender of a specific waterway who holds polluters accountable. In Keeping the Chattahoochee, she tells stories that range from joyous and funny to frustrating—even alarming—to illustrate what it takes to save an endangered river. Her tales are triggered by the regular walks she takes through a forest to the Chattahoochee over the course of a year, finding solace and kinship in nature.

For two decades, Bethea worked to restore the neglected Chattahoochee, which provides drinking water and recreation to millions of people, habitat for wildlife, and water for industries and farms as it cuts through the heart of the Deep South. Pairing natural and political history with reflective writing, she draws readers into her watershed and her memories. Bethea’s passion for the natural world—and for defending it with a strong, informed voice animates this instructive memoir. Offering lessons on how to fight for our fundamental right to clean water, Bethea and her colleagues take on powerful corporate and government polluters. They strengthen environmental policies and educate children, reviving the great river from a century of misuse.

About the Author: 

Sally Sierer Bethea is the retired founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. She served as executive director and riverkeeper for two decades and continues to assist Chattahoochee Riverkeeper as a senior advisor. Bethea also publishes a monthly column, Above the Waterline, in Atlanta Intown. She lives and writes in midtown Atlanta.

About the Conversation Partner: 

Rebecca Wade holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Furman University, and a Masters of Natural Science and Environmental Education from Hamline University. Her experience ranges from wildlife research to environmental education and she looks forward to utilizing her knowledge to expand Upstate Forever’s Clean Water initiatives. While Wade has enjoyed learning and teaching about the natural world across the country, she is deeply connected to conservation in the Upstate. In her free time, she enjoys many forms of outdoor recreation including, but not limited to, running, biking, hiking, and backpacking. Additionally, she loves spending time with her husband and dogs at Greenville’s many breweries and restaurants alike.

Upstate Forever is a conservation organization that protects critical lands, waters, and the unique character of the Upstate of South Carolina. Learn more at upstateforever.org.

Many programs say that they’ll help you lose weight but how many really teach you how to live healthier?

Healing Head To Toe isn’t about making you a lifetime client but instead a walking testimony to what happens when you take your life back.

Learn To
– Eliminate chronic illnesses
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PLUS an exclusive opportunity for a consultation to join the Healing Head To Toe community.

Secure your spot at the next session by registering using the link below:
https://book.stripe.com/dR6aFq58Y32RemAeUY

FREE to attend. No shows will be charged $25. A card must be on file to register. HSA and FSA are both accepted.

Waters and light refreshments will be provided.