Discuss the classic Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery with fellow readers. Registration required.

Join us for this live virtual event via Zoom. Read and discuss tonight’s short story selection: The Comforts of Home by Flannery O’Connor. Once you register to attend, we will email you the selected short story for this session.

Registration is required and opens one month prior to event.

Join Nicole Strickland & Leilani Wood for an in-person launch party and meet and greet at Fiction Addiction on Saturday, August 28th at 1pm to celebrate the launch of their new book, Friendship Defined: The 31-Day Remarkable Journey to Becoming a Better Friend.

Admission to the event is free, or a ticket that includes the book can be bought for $16.95 (you can pick up your included book at the event). The authors will be available to mingle and sign books at the event.

Discuss any book you’ve read recently with other readers! Recommend your favorite book from this year and receive recommendations for a potential new favorite. Registration required.

Dig into a little true crime as we discuss “American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI” by Kate Dawson. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.

Books published in 2021 are the thing this month! Join in on a fun discussion of current reads. Email Catie at [email protected] for the Zoom link!

Join Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) as she discusses her debut novel, Even As We Breathe. Even As We Breathe tells the story of Cowney Sequoyah, a young man yearning to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina when a summer job at Asheville’s stately Grove Park Inn and Resort changes his path in life. With World War II raging in Europe, the Grove Park Inn and Resort quickly becomes the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, all being held as prisoners of war.

Clapsaddle, holding degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary, will discuss her connections to the EBCI and her research of the history behind the State Department’s lease of the Grove Park Inn and its use as an internment camp.

Lunchbox Learning is free for UHM Members and included with general admission for all other guests.

Join us for a virtual evening with award-winning Southern author, Beth Gilstrap on October 19th at 7PM! We will be celebrating the release of her new short story collection, Deadheading and Other Stories. This is a free virtual event which we will host on Zoom. Signed copies are available for purchase.

Deadheading and Other Stories

by Beth Gilstrap

“These stories are little gardens—the words blooming, the rain too.”—Leesa Cross-Smith, author of This Close to Okay

Irrevocably tied to the Carolinas, these stories tell tales of the woebegone, their obsessions with decay, and the haunting ache of the region itself—the land of the dwindling pines, the isolation inherent in the mountains and foothills, and the loneliness of boomtowns. Predominantly working-class women challenge the status quo by rejecting any lingering expectations or romantic notions of Southern femininity. Small businesses are failing. Factories are closing. Money is tight. The threat of violence lingers for women and girls. Through their collective grief, heartache, and unsettling circumstances, many of these characters become feral and hell-bent on survival. Gilstrap’s prose teems with wildness and lyricism, showing the Southern gothic tradition of storytelling is alive and feverishly unwell in the twenty-first century.

“Beth Gilstrap doesn’t write stories. She creates worlds. Living, breathing, meticulously crafted ecosystems we can walk and breathe in. Around every corner is someone familiar, some bleeding wound that hasn’t quite healed, some inhabitant walking through their lives independent of our gaze. These are heartbreaking worlds, but nonetheless beautiful.”—Jared Yates Sexton, author of The Man They Wanted Me to Be

Beth Gilstrap is the author of I Am Barbarella (2015) from Twelve Winters Press. Her work has been selected as Longform.org’s “Fiction Pick of the Week” and chosen by Dan Chaon for inclusion in the Best Microfiction Anthology 2019. She holds an MFA from Chatham University. Her stories, essays, and hybrids have appeared in Ninth Letter, the Minnesota Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Stream Lit, and Wigleaf, among others. Born and raised in the Charlotte area, she has recently relocated to Louisville.

Join us at the bookshop on Thursday, October 21st, at 7PM for a conversation with Ed Southern! We will be discussing his newest book, Fight Songs, a wry and witty commentary on college sports and identity in the complicated social landscape of the South. This event will be held in-person at the bookshop and will also stream live on Facebook. Facemasks are required for all attendees and seating is limited, please register to save your seat.

Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

by Ed Southern

• • •

Ed Southern, lifelong fan of the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, the smallest school in the NCAA’s Power 5, set out to tell the story of how he got tangled, in vines of history and happenstance, with the two giants of his favorite sport: the Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. He set out to tell how a North Carolina native crossed the shifty, unmarked border between Tobacco Road and the Deep South. He set out to tell how the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, from beyond the grave, introduced him to his wife, a Birmingham native and die-hard Alabama fan.

While he was writing that story, though, 2020 came along.

Suddenly his questions had a new and urgent focus: Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have the South’s histories shaped its fervor for college sports? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances? Why is North Carolina passionate about college basketball when its neighbors to the South live and die by college football? Does this have anything to do with North Carolina’s reputation as the most “progressive” southern state, a state many in the Deep South don’t think is “really” southern? If college sports really do mean so much in the South, then why didn’t everyone down south wear masks or recognize that Black Lives Matter, even after the coaches told us to?

Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the virtues that sports are supposed to teach and the cutthroat business they’ve become; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present, and future.

“This book is about so much: the South, love, history, and how sports define, degrade, refine, and redeem us. Holding this gumbo of ideas together is―what else?―football. Fight Songs is epic, how tailgating with Friedrich Nietzsche would be epic. I’m really glad this book is in the world.”―Daniel Wallace, Extraordinary Adventures and Big Fish

Ed Southern is the author of The Jamestown Adventure, Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas, and the short-story collection Parlous Angels. His work has appeared in South Writ Large, the Asheville Poetry Review, storySouth, the NC 10×10 Play Festival, and elsewhere. Since 2008, he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. He lives in Winston-Salem.

Join us for a spooky fun and interactive virtual children’s story hour on Saturday, October 23rd at 1:00PM! The author and illustrator will be reading from their new Halloween release, The Witches Three Count on Me!. Illustrations from the book will be shown as the story is read. Sign up now to hold your spot.

The Witches Three Count on Me!

by Yates Davis and Lynda Bouchard, illustrated by Kody Kratzer

• • •

Nothing cures being sent to your room on Halloween night like an unexplored forest. Count on it!

This is no ordinary night. It’s Halloween and a mischievous boy has run away from home. He takes a path through twisted forest trees and comes upon a frightful scene – three witches up to no good! They see him, too, and that’s when the magic begins. Will he outsmart the witches as they try to capture him? Told through the prism of a child’s imagination, you’ll discover that daring and wit come in handy when three witches are out to get you.

“A magical story that captures the fun and spirit of Halloween. I highly recommend it!”—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times best-selling author of Turtle Summer

This is a story about taking chances, thinking on your feet, and being resourceful and brave when you face the unexpected. It’s about discovering that grown-ups don’t have all the answers. The delightful riddle is a fun teaching tool for parents and teachers of grade school children and will have them returning to this clever story again and again – even when it’s not Halloween.

“The Witches Three Count on Me! is a deliciously scary story in rhyme about a clever lad who outwits three witches to save himself on Halloween night. How does he do it? The answer is a riddle to be solved, dear reader!”—Cassandra King, best-selling author of Tell Me a Story

We are pleased to welcome author Denise Kiernan to the bookshop to discuss her book, We Gather Together, on Tuesday, October 26th, at 7PM! She will be in conversation with Erin Templeton from Converse College. The book’s message of gratitude—especially when embraced during the hardest of times—makes it one to read and share, over and over, at any time of year, but it seems especially appropriate to discuss approaching the holiday season.

*Seating at the bookshop is limited due to social distancing measures; register to save your seat! Please note that masks are required for all in-person events.

. . .

We Gather Together

by Denise Kiernan

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City comes a new way to look at American history through the story of giving thanks.

From Ancient Rome through 21st-century America, bestselling author Denise Kiernan brings us a biography of an idea: gratitude, as a compelling human instinct and a global concept, more than just a mere holiday. Spanning centuries, We Gather Together is anchored amid the strife of the Civil War, and driven by the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother with no formal schooling who became one of the 19th century’s most influential tastemakers and who campaigned for decades to make real an annual day of thanks.

Populated by an enthralling supporting cast of characters including Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, Norman Rockwell, and others, We Gather Together is ultimately a story of tenacity and dedication, an inspiring tale of how imperfect people in challenging times can create powerful legacies.

Working at the helm of one of the most widely read magazines in the nation, Hale published Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others, while introducing American readers to such newfangled concepts as “domestic science,” white wedding gowns, and the Christmas tree. A prolific writer, Hale penned novels, recipe books, essays and more, including the ubiquitous children’s poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” And Hale herself never stopped pushing the leaders of her time, in pursuit of her goal.

The man who finally granted her wish about a national “thanksgiving” was Lincoln, the president of the war-torn nation in which Hale would never have the right to vote.

Denise Kiernan is an author, journalist, and producer who has worked as a writer for more than 20 years. Her last two books—The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City—were instant New York Times bestsellers in both hardcover and paperback. The Last Castle was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, a finalist for the 2018 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. The Girls of Atomic City was a Los Angeles Times and NPR bestseller, named one of Amazon’s “Top 100 Best Books of 2013,” and has been published in multiple languages. Kiernan has been a featured guest on many radio and television shows, including NPR’s Weekend Edition, PBS NewsHour, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Erin Templeton is the Dean of the College of Humanities, Sciences, and Business *and* a Professor of English at Converse College, where she specializes in 20th and 21st Century American literature. She loves to run. She is a crime fiction junkie, a rabid Steeler fan, a decent fantasy football manager, and can put together a respectable March Madness bracket. For a while, she was a contributing writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education blog ProfHacker. In her spare time, you can find her running and probably listening to an audiobook, walking her dog, feeding a cat or two, or, just maybe, taking a nap.

We are pleased to welcome author Denise Kiernan to the bookshop to discuss her book, We Gather Together, on Tuesday, October 26th, at 7PM! She will be in conversation with Erin Templeton from Converse College. The book’s message of gratitude—especially when embraced during the hardest of times—makes it one to read and share, over and over, at any time of year, but it seems especially appropriate to discuss approaching the holiday season.

*Seating at the bookshop is limited due to social distancing measures; register to save your seat! Please note that masks are required for all in-person events.

We Gather Together

by Denise Kiernan

• • •

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City comes a new way to look at American history through the story of giving thanks.

From Ancient Rome through 21st-century America, bestselling author Denise Kiernan brings us a biography of an idea: gratitude, as a compelling human instinct and a global concept, more than just a mere holiday. Spanning centuries, We Gather Together is anchored amid the strife of the Civil War, and driven by the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother with no formal schooling who became one of the 19th century’s most influential tastemakers and who campaigned for decades to make real an annual day of thanks.

Populated by an enthralling supporting cast of characters including Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, Norman Rockwell, and others, We Gather Together is ultimately a story of tenacity and dedication, an inspiring tale of how imperfect people in challenging times can create powerful legacies