Events Calendar
Explore family friendly events, theatres, galleries, concerts, nightlife, things to do, and more in the Greenville, SC and Upstate areas.
Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.
- FOL Children’s Used Book Sale
- Drumming with Jeff Holland*
- Balloon Artist Avan Kroy*
*These programs are generously underwritten by the Friends of the Greenville County Library System.
Part of the event series: Summer Reading
A combination of live animals, biofacts and videos, provide a first-hand look at the amazing creatures that populate our shorelines. Best for school age.
Your reading log and a numbered ticket are required for admission. Pick up your ticket in the lobby of the Library location where you will attend, no more than 90 minutes in advance of the program. Adults must be accompanied by at least one child. Entry is not guaranteed. Seating limitations specified by local fire marshal. No groups.
This project is made possible by a Library Services and Technology grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the South Carolina State Library.
Part of the event series: Summer Reading
A combination of live animals, biofacts and videos, provide a first-hand look at the amazing creatures that populate our shorelines. Best for school age.
Your reading log and a numbered ticket are required for admission. Pick up your ticket in the lobby of the Library location where you will attend, no more than 90 minutes in advance of the program. Adults must be accompanied by at least one child. Entry is not guaranteed. Seating limitations specified by local fire marshal. No groups.
This project is made possible by a Library Services and Technology grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the South Carolina State Library.
Part of the event series: Summer Reading
Join us on Thursday, June 16th at 5:30 pm for an In Conversation event with Holly Pinheiro, Jr.!
HOLLY A. PINHEIRO JR. is an assistant professor of African American history at Furman University. He is the author of articles in American Nineteenth Century History, the African American Intellectual History Society’s Black Perspectives blog, and the Journal of the Civil War Era‘s Muster blog.
His book tells the stories of freeborn northern African Americans in Philadelphia struggling to maintain families while fighting against racial discrimination. Taking a long view, from 1850 to the 1920s, Pinheiro shows how Civil War military service worsened already difficult circumstances due to its negative effects on family finances, living situations, minds, and bodies.
This is a Free event!
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Hub City welcomes author Judy Goldman to the Bookshop for a reading and signing of her new memoir, “Child.” Named a Must Read by Katie Couric Media, the book examines the personal relationship between the author and Mattie Culp, the Black woman who worked for her family and helped to raise her in the Jim Crow South. A nuanced and incisive account that “illuminates the paradoxes of a loving childhood built on ‘unconscionable suffering,'” the book interrogates white privilege and racism while also meditating on love and protection.
This event is free and open to all! Come out to the Bookshop at 6pm on Thursday, June 16th.
A 2022 Katie Couric Media Must-Read New Book • A personal meditation on love in the shadow of white privilege and racism
Child is the story of Judy Goldman’s relationship with Mattie Culp, the Black woman who worked for her family as a live-in maid and helped raise her―the unconscionable scaffolding on which the relationship was built and the deep love. It is also the story of Mattie’s child, who was left behind to be raised by someone else. Judy, now eighty, cross-examines what it was to be a privileged white child in the Jim Crow South, how a bond can evolve in and out of step with a changing world, and whether we can ever tell the whole truth, even to ourselves. It is an incandescent book of small moments, heart-warming, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.
Praise for “Child”
“Child is brave and lyrically told, a hymn of praise to a woman Goldman adored.”―Charlotte Observer
“[Goldman] looks back on her life with a discerning eye that is able to appraise the dichotomy of her Southern upbringing. This act of remembering and then re-seeing brings a whiplash of honest realizations to the memoir’s pages. … Child shows that truth―at least truth of a sort―can be found.”―SouthPark
“A gently told memoir of a cherished woman.”―Kirkus
“A rich memoir that is long overdue, Child examines a Jewish child’s loving relationship with a Black woman in the segregated South.”―Foreword Reviews
“[A] fascinating memoir…”―The Charlotte Jewish News
“This moving memoir of a Black woman’s importance in a white family reminds me that behind, under, and above the racial divide in the South, there ran strong currents of abiding love and mutual protection. These currents Judy Goldman excels at exploring without illusion and with full humanity. What a brave and timely book.”―Frances Mayes, New York Times bestselling author of Under Magnolia and Under the Tuscan Sun
“Steeped in vivid, evocative memories of her southern childhood, Goldman’s moving memoir “re-inhabits” and “interprets” the past: a white child growing up in a Black woman’s care. It’s a brave undertaking to explore the complexities of that time and place, but Goldman’s wise, clear-eyed recognition of truth moves the memories into a new place.”―Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Hieroglyphics
“With mesmerizing detail and remarkable acuity, with a storyteller’s ear and a poet’s precision, Judy Goldman conveys, in Child, the profound goodness that shaped her, the antinomies that haunt her, and the mysteries that exert themselves even within the gilded frame of love.”―Beth Kephart, National Book Award finalist and author of Wife Daughter Self: A Memoir in Essays and We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class
“Child is as profound a memoir as I’ve ever read. In one gorgeously rendered scene after another, Goldman illuminates the paradoxes of a loving childhood built on “unconscionable scaffolding.” To read this riveting book is to learn how to hold the finest detail up to the light, how to examine all memory.”―Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones
“Judy Goldman cuts through the mist of memory to find a deeper truth in her relationship with her family’s longtime housekeeper, Mattie. It’s a story about love, family, privilege and prejudice, seen through the eyes of innocence and the eyes of experience. What a stunning feat.”―Tommy Tomlinson, author of The Elephant in the Room
About the Author
Judy Goldman is the award-winning author of seven books – three memoirs, two novels, and two collections of poetry. Her new memoir, Child, will be published May 2022. It was named a Katie Couric Media Must-Read Book for 2022. Her recent memoir, Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap, was named one of the best books of 2019 by Real Simple magazine and received a starred review from Library Journal. Her work has appeared in USA Today, Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, Real Simple, LitHub, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, Ohio Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She lives in Charlotte, NC, with her husband. They have two married children and four grandchildren.
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Join us at 6pm on Monday, June 21st for a reading and conversation with Brent Martin, author of George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina. We will celebrate this new Hub City Press release with a conversation between Brent and John Lane.
This event is free and open to all; register to let us know you’re coming and to save your copy of the book below.
George Masa’s Wild Vision recounts the incredible, overlooked life of the photographer George Masa.
Self-taught photographer George Masa (born Masahara Iizuka in Osaka, Japan), arrived in Asheville, North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century amid a period of great transition in the southern Appalachians.
Masa’s photographs from the 1920s and early 1930s are stunning windows into an era where railroads hauled out the remaining old-growth timber with impunity, new roads were blasted into hillsides, and an activist community emerged to fight for a new national park. Masa began photographing the nearby mountains and helping to map the Appalachian Trail, capturing this transition like no other photographer of his time. His images, along with his knowledge of the landscape, became a critical piece of the argument for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, compelling John D. Rockefeller to donate $5 million for initial land purchases. Despite being hailed as the “Ansel Adams of the Smokies,” Masa died destitute and unknown in 1933.
In George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina, poet and environmental organizer Brent Martin explores the locations Masa visited, using first-person narratives to contrast, lament, and exalt the condition of the landscape the photographer so loved and worked to interpret and protect. The book includes seventy-five of Masa’s photographs, accompanied by Martin’s reflections on Masa’s life and work.
Brent Martin is the author of three chapbook collections of poetry and of The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present. His poetry and essays have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, Pisgah Review, Tar River Poetry, Chattahoochee Review, Eno Journal, New Southerner, Kudzu Literary Journal, Smoky Mountain News and elsewhere. He lives in the Cowee community in Western North Carolina, where he and his wife, Angela Faye Martin, run Alarka Institute.
John Lane is emeritus professor at Wofford College, where he taught creative writing, environmental studies, and directed the Goodall Environmental Studies Center. There he helped imagine and direct the Thinking Like a River Initiative. In the past decade Lane has been named one of seven regional Culture Pioneers by Blue Ridge Outdoors and he has been honored with the Water Conservationist Award from the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, the Clean Water Champion by South Carolina’s Upstate Forever, and inducted in 2014 into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. One of the founders of the Hub City Writers Project, Lane lives near the banks of Lawson’s Fork outside of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov’s experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
Fee
A $3 fee is required to assist the organizer with costs related to A Novel Bunch.
Nourishment
We always go to a restaurant to dine after the discussion so plan to join us for this. We will eat at Cantina 76.
We are so excited to spend an evening with Joy talking over her latest book The Grand Design. What better way to do it than over a couple of cocktails??
Based on the true story of famed designer Dorothy Draper, The Grand Design is a moving tale of one woman’s quest to transform the walls that hold her captive.
Join us Tuesday, June 21st at 7:30 pm. Your ticket includes admission, a cocktail, and a copy of the book.
Join us on Crowdcast at 6pm on Thursday, June 23rd for a conversation about author Aimie K. Runyan’s new book The School for German Brides. An intriguing historical novel set at a Nazi “bride school,” the book tells the story of two women, trapped by circumstance, who forge an unlikely alliance in the face of evil. Runyan will be joined in conversation by Kate Quinn, bestselling author of The Alice Network. Certain to appeal to fans of historical fiction, this virtual event is free and open to all. Register for the livestream via the link below, and don’t forget to reserve your copy of the book
Join us for a book-inspired wine tasting! We pair the qualities of each wine with a book that shares the same spirit. Your ticket to the tasting, apart from the tastes, includes your choice of one of the featured books. Bottles of the featured wines will be for sale at great prices, too. This event is a crowd favorite, serving as a great date, a perfect girls night out, or treat to yourself. Buy your ticket now and join us on Thursday, June 23rd at 7:30pm.
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Join us at 6pm on Monday, June 27th for a reading and conversation with Diane C. McPhail, author of The Seamstress of New Orleans. Set in 1900 as the Suffrage Movement was gathering steam across the country, this new historical novel from the acclaimed author of The Abolitionist’s Daughter revolves around two very different women fated to meet in the jasmine-scented humidity of the French Quarter amidst preparations for the first all-female krewe, Les Mysterieuses, to take the reins at that year’s Mardi Gras. It’s a richly detailed story that weaves the history of Mardi Gras and women’s rights with the unlikely kinship between two women riding on the cusp of societal change, the secrets they must hide, and the glittering gown that binds them together.
Against the backdrop of the first all-female Mardi Gras krewe in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, Diane McPhail’s mesmerizing historical novel tells of two strangers separated by background but bound by an unexpected secret—and of the strength and courage women draw from and inspire in each other.
“An undercurrent of New Orleans’s dark side propels the story, heightening the tension and supplying McPhail with a wealth of evocative details.” – Publishers Weekly
The year 1900 ushers in a new century and the promise of social change, and women rise together toward equality. Yet rules and restrictions remain, especially for women like Alice Butterworth, whose husband has abruptly disappeared. Desperate to make a living for herself and the child she carries, Alice leaves the bitter cold of Chicago far behind, offering sewing lessons at a New Orleans orphanage.
Constance Halstead, a young widow reeling with shock under the threat of her late husband’s gambling debts, has thrown herself into charitable work. Meeting Alice at the orphanage, she offers lodging in exchange for Alice’s help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all‑female krewe of Mardi Gras. During Leap Years, women have the rare opportunity to take control in their interactions with men, and upend social convention. Piece by piece, the breathtaking gown takes shape, becoming a symbol of strength for both women, reflecting their progress toward greater independence.
But Constance carries a burden that makes it impossible to feel truly free. Her husband, Benton, whose death remains a dangerous mystery, was deep in debt to the Black Hand, the vicious gangsters who controled New Orleans’ notorious Storyville district. Benton’s death has not satisfied them. And as the Mardi Gras festivities reach their fruition, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance even as it threatens the lives they’re building . . .
***
About the Author
Diane C. McPhail is an artist, writer, and minister. In addition to holding an M.F.A., an M.A., and D.Min., she has studied at the University of Iowa distance learning and the Yale Writers’ Workshop, among others. Diane is a member of North Carolina Writers’ Network and the Historical Novel Society. She lives in Highlands, North Carolina, with her husband, and her dog, Pepper.
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Join us in the Bookshop at 6pm on Tuesday, June 28th for a reading and signing with author Scott Blackburn, whose literary debut It Dies With You follows 29-year-old professional boxer Hudson Miller. Called back to his Bible-belt hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina after his father’s murder, Miller is plunged into the criminal underbelly of this small Southern milieu in an attempt to uncover the secrets that led to the crime. Perfect for fans of Brian Panowich, Michael Kardos, and Chris Offutt, this book marks the debut of an exciting new writer. Don’t miss your chance to meet him!
This event is free and open to all, but please save your seat and your copy of the book with a ticket at the link!
This month we’ll be reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The plan is to read the book, discuss it at book club, and then get together another night to watch the movie!
We’ll be meeting at Southernside Brewing Co. this time, which is a really cool space! If you don’t drink, don’t worry – there’s no pressure to at all! We just want to try out a new space for meeting and we’re open to suggestions!
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction
Length: 374 pages
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9969571-ready-player-one?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=D9sxCWHyq7&rank=1
Description:
IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.
But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
This month we’ll be reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The plan is to read the book, discuss it at book club, and then get together another night to watch the movie!
We’ll be meeting at Southernside Brewing Co. this time, which is a really cool space! If you don’t drink, don’t worry – there’s no pressure to at all! We just want to try out a new space for meeting and we’re open to suggestions!
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction
Length: 374 pages
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9969571-ready-player-one?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=D9sxCWHyq7&rank=1
Description:
IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.
But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
Join us for Lunch & Lit with Mary Laura Philpott and her book, Bomb Shelter.
A lifelong worrier, Philpott always kept an eye out for danger, a habit that only intensified when she became a parent. But she looked on the bright side, too, believing that as long as she cared enough, she could keep her loved ones safe, until a horrible morning left her anxious about everything. Leave it to the writer whose critically acclaimed debut had us “laughing and crying on the same page” (NPR) to explore our protective instincts, the ways we continue to grow up long after we’re grown, and the limits—both tragic and hilarious—of the human body and mind.
Tickets are $45 and include a three course lunch and a copy of Bomb Shelter.
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Hub City is excited to welcome Mary Laura Philpott to the Bookshop for a reading and signing of her new memoir-in-essays Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. The book, which Untamed author Glennon Doyle calls “an unforgettable memoir about holding it together when it’s time to let go,” humorously and humanely charts Philpott’s own experiences navigating the ups and downs of life. Perfect for anyone who has ever felt anxious, optimistic, or both—in other words, all of us—this book is a fun and inspiring read. Don’t miss the opportunity to meet its talented author!
Refreshments and mingling will start at 5:30pm, with reading and signing to begin at 6:00pm. This event is free and open to all, but we expect it to fill up quickly, so make sure to save your seat and your copy of the book via the link. See you at the Bookshop!
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Join us virtually on Wednesday, July 6th at 6:00pm to discuss Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. Now a modern classic, this novel won the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award when it was originally published in 2001.
Her story is a book club that meets on the first Wednesday of every month to discuss books by women, about women. Sign up at the link below for the link to the Zoom room! Book club will start at 6pm; we can’t wait to meet you there. Happy reading!
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
“Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book.” —Washington Post Book World
New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
About the Author
Ann Patchett is the author of many novels, including Bel Canto, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She writes for the New York Times Magazine, Elle, GQ, the Financial Times, the Paris Review and Vogue. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Join Ashley Poston for an in-person book talk and signing at Fiction Addiction on Saturday, July 9th, at 2pm to celebrate the launch of her new book, The Dead Romantics.
Tickets to the event are $18.02, and include a copy of The Dead Romantics. Capacity is limited, so purchase your tickets today! Additional books can be ordered on our website or purchased at the event while supplies last. The author will be available to mingle and sign books at the event.
If you do not feel comfortable attending in-person, signed copies of The Dead Romantics can be purchased on our website.
Tickets can be purchased online through Saturday, July 9th, at 1pm. Refunds can be requested up until the ticket cutoff. At-the-door tickets and books will be available as space allows.
A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.
Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.
When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.
For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.
Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.
Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.
About the Author:
Ashley Poston writes stories about love and friendship and ever afters. A native to South Carolina, she now lives in a small grey house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan-fiction. Learn more at www.ashposton.com.
Refund Policy:
- You may request a full refund prior to the ticket cutoff.
Join us for the Launch Party for Erik Weir’s Who’s Eating Your Pie: Essential Financial Advice that Will Transform Your Life! Whether you’re just starting your career at twenty-two or quickly approaching retirement at sixty-two, Who’s Eating Your Pie? will give you the tools you need to grow a bigger, sweeter financial pie than you ever thought possible—and keep everyone else’s fingers out of it!
An expert on entrepreneurism, goal setting, real estate investment, money management, marketing and promotion, Weir is a life-long student who has earned degrees and certificates from Georgia State University and Harvard Extension School. He is a father of 5 sons and lives in South Carolina.