Events Calendar

Join us for a Pop-Up with author Martha LaGuardia-Kotite and her book Changing the Rules of Engagement!

Changing the Rules of Engagement brings to life the authentic, vivid stories of leadership from inspiring and adventurous women who achieved the extraordinary by serving their country in the U.S. military. These women shattered the glass ceiling and performed extraordinary feats by refusing to take “no” for an answer and learning how to lead in traditionally male-dominated environments. Martha LaGuardia-Kotite skillfully captures their leadership lessons, struggles, and successes—showing how courageous and tenacious women can achieve their goals and help change policy, insights also applicable to today’s leaders in corporate and business boardrooms.

Whether soaring into outer space with the second woman to command a space shuttle or plunging to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean with a combat veteran special operations diver, these profiles in leadership highlight a range of powerful examples: from Vivien Crea, a vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who rose to the highest position of any woman in the history of the U.S. military, to Tammy Duckworth, who demonstrated her resilience after being shot down while piloting a helicopter in Iraq and went on to serve as a U.S. senator. Also included are the inspirational stories of women Marines and the first women members of the military service academies’ gender-integrated classes, who recall the highs and lows of their trailblazing journey.

Representative of a widely diverse group of enlisted women and officers of different races and cultures, these women have succeeded since the mid-1970s at combating prejudices and aiding change in the military culture with grit, intelligence, leadership, and honor.

Come here more about it from the author Martha Saturday morning from 10am to noon!

Join us for an informal writing workshop. Registration required. Email [email protected] or call 864-963-9031.

Join us on Wednesday, August 9th at 5:30 pm for a special In Conversation event with playwright and author Vichet Chum! He’ll be chatting about his play Kween, which will be included in the South Carolina New Play Festival, and about the novel version of Kween coming out in October.

Kween is a searing, joyful play about a queer Cambodian American teen’s journey to find her voice and step into her legacy. Following her Dad’s deportation, everything has changed for Soma. Her Mom is away, helping her husband adjust to his new life, while her older sister, Dahvy, is preparing for her quickly unravelling wedding. Through poetry, Soma finds the words to not only save the day, but more importantly, to express exactly what she’s feeling.

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

SC NEW PLAY FESTIVAL

The second SC New Play Festival will celebrate engaging and dynamic new plays and musicals from across the United States. This year’s festival will feature a variety presentation, 2 staged readings of new plays, a staged reading of a show for young audiences, a staged reading of a new musical, and a cabaret featuring a Broadway star. Learn more here: https://www.southcarolinanewplayfestival.org.

BOOK SUMMARY

Soma Kear’s verses have gone viral. Trouble is, she didn’t exactly think her slam poetry video through. All she knew was that her rhymes were urgent. On fire. An expression of where she was, and that place…was a hot mess.
Following her Ba’s deportation back to Cambodia, everything’s changed. Her Ma is away trying to help Ba adjust to his new life, and her older sister has taken charge with a new authoritarian tone. Meanwhile, Soma’s trending video pushes her to ask if it’s time to level up. With her school’s spoken word contest looming, Soma must decide: Is she brave enough to put herself out there? To publicly reveal her fears of Ba not returning? To admit that things may never be the same?

With every line she spits, Soma searches for a way to make sense of the world around her. The answers are at the mic.

From debut author Vichet Chum comes a celebration of Khmer identity, queerness, and embracing the complicated histories that shape who we are and want to be.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VICHET CHUM (he/him) is a Cambodian American writer originally from Carrollton, TX. He graduated from the University of Evansville and received an MFA from Brown University. He currently lives in New York City. Kween is his debut novel, and you can visit Vichet at vichetchum.com.

Join us for a Pop-Up with YA author Kailey Bright! UNRAVEL—Book #2 in the UN Series—is a story of conflicting identity, forged in deception, and perfect for fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

Come meet Kailey, hear more about her book, and get a copy Saturday morning from 10am to noon!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Nora is her country’s first Unfortunate soldier—born without any powers and the only one of her kind still serving the Gifted elite. At the hem of a hesitant princess-turned-queen, Nora struggles to keep her fallen lover’s promise with the country’s growing instability.

Cassius, the disregarded prince Nora came to love, has revealed himself as the most powerful Gifted in existence—capable of taking any Gifted’s power for himself. He’s now hailed as a dark messiah for the Unfortunate revolution. After taking what he believes rightfully belongs to him, Cassius haunts Nora in her mind and toys with her emotions and allegiance alike. While Nora seeks to stop his rising influence, it’s hard for her to ignore that they both seek the same result: equity for her people.

Caught between her status as an Unfortunate, her newfound title alongside Gifted friends, and an inner light that could be further deceit, Nora must decide where her loyalty lies and face the embedding consequences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kailey Bright is a contemporary YA fiction author and computer scientist, which means she writes code during daylight and writes about fantastical worlds under starlight.

Tired of YA stories where protagonists suddenly get secret, plot-helpful powers, Bright seeks to write powerful and ambitious stories about characters who persevere with and through disadvantages. Her books are meant to positively impact readers who struggle with challenging societal norms and cultivating inner growth.

When she’s not tanning under her computer screen’s glow, Kailey enjoys winning at mediocre bowling and drinking tea on cool mornings.

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.

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.

Join us on Thursday, August 17th at 5:30 pm for an In Conversation event with award winning poet Glenis Redmond!

The first Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, Glenis has received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She’ll be talking about her collection The Listening Skin. We’re honored to have Glenis in store with us and can’t wait to hear all about her writing process and inspirations, and hear her answer questions about her collection.

So don’t miss out on this free event!

BOOK SUMMARY

Hewing close to the bone, the incendiary poems in The Listening Skin explore how an artist dares to dance and create through a pain-riddled body. Corporeal and spiritual, immediately personal and deeply historical, Redmond’s latest collection details how generational cycles of poverty, mental and physical illness, and systemic racism impact the self, the family, and the greater African-American collective. Examining the connection between adverse childhood experiences and adult chronic conditions, Redmond’s poems arise from her deepest listening, beyond the skin, rooted in the marrow. They speak to the hardship of enduring fibromyalgia and the ongoing challenges of multiple myeloma while rejoicing in survival and the grace of existence itself. Yes, The Listening Skin affirms life and demands the dignity its speaker deserves: “I am full of this past present heat / I carry. / I come to the shore, / but I vacate nothing.” This consummate work honors embodied knowledge, all that’s heard at the boundary between flesh and air, vacating nothing, determinedly and brilliantly whole.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award and inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She is a “Charlie Award” recipient awarded by the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival and was recently a recipient of the Peacemaker Award by the Upstate Mediation Center in 2022.

Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90’s. Glenis confesses that she is Bi-Carolinian as she lived in Asheville, North Carolina for seventeen years and was a vital leader in the poetry scene in the 90’s. During that time, she was a Southern Fried Slam champion of the individuals twice and ranked twice in the top ten at the National Poetry Slam. Glenis helped found Word Slam, a poetry slam for teens in Asheville, NC. She was awarded the WNC Best Poet through the Mountain Xpress so many times, she was placed in the Hall of Fame. She is a North Carolina Literary Fellowship recipient and helped to create the first Writer-in-Residence program at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian and Paisley and newborn, Quinn.

Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. She served as the Poet-in-Resident for the Peace Center in Greenville and the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. As a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, for seventeen years, Glenis has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country.

Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House.

Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.

Join us for an informal writing workshop. Registration required. Email [email protected] or call 864-963-9031.

Join us for a Pop-Up with author Timothy Joseph Foreman! He’ll be in store with his collection of strange short stories On the Borders of Reality.

Come meet Timothy, hear more about his work, and get a copy Saturday morning from 10am to noon!

ABOUT THE BOOK

What happens at death? What horror lurks in the dark? What if ghosts are not what they seem? What if aliens are not what they appear to be? What if hallucinations were not just “in the head?” This book is full of strange and unique stories. There are monsters, heroes, plot twists, and other worlds. All these stories are different. They all have the same underlying theme, the mystery of human existence.