Author Appearance

Former CBS programming executive, Jim McKairnes will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, January 18th at 6:30 p.m. He will be in conversation with his long-time friend Jeff Ginn as they discuss Jim’s book, All in the Decade: 70 Things about 70s TV That Turned Ten Years Into a Revolution. To reserve copies of All in the Decade please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

City Lights Bookstore and The Jackson County Public Library have partnered for an event featuring David Gates and Tim Osment on Saturday, February 2nd at 3 p.m in the Community Room of the library. They will present David’s book, The Way I See It, a look at his life growing up in Appalachia, becoming blind, and the determination to succeed despite his many hardships. City Lights Bookstore will have copies of The Way I See It available on sale at the library. 

Georgann Eubanks visited City Lights Bookstore on Friday, December 7th to present her latest book, The Month of Their Ripening: North Carolina Heritage Foods Through the Year.  We have signed copies available.

Telling the stories of twelve North Carolina heritage foods, each matched to the month of its peak readiness for eating, Georgann Eubanks takes readers on a flavorful journey across the state. She begins in January with the most ephemeral of southern ingredients--snow--to witness Tar Heels making snow cream. In March, she takes a midnight canoe ride on the Trent River in search of shad, a bony fish with a savory history. In April, she highlights how garlicky green ramps, traditionally savored by many Cherokee people, is endangered by its increasing popularity in fine restaurants. In November, she visits a Chatham County sawmill where the possums are always first into the persimmon trees.

Michael Revere will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, February 9th at 3 p.m. He will read from his newest collection, Hey Jude. This collection is an homage to his wife, Judith Revere and combines strong poems of spirituality, sociology, and love. To reserve copies of Hey Jude, please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Ronald Evans will present his book Frankie: A Life Cut Short on Friday, October 12th at 6:30 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore. His book examines the unsolved murder of Frances S. Bullock who was brutally stabbed to death in her Franklin, NC home in 1963.

Ronald C. "Ronnie" Evans is a retired television engineer, a performing musician, and now a first-time author. His previous writing experience was limited to writing commercial copy and news reports when working in radio, and assisting in writing grants for equipment in television. He is a native of Franklin. To reserve copies of Frankie: A Life Cut Short please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Randy Bell will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, October 26th at 6:30 p.m. He will present his book, Conversations with America: Confronting the Divisive Challenges of Our Time.  In this series of essays, author Randy Bell raises questions about what it means to be an American in the early 21st century. Covering a range of issues from government and its responsibility to its people, international relations, the economy and business, religion, discrimination, and human rights, Bell makes a case for reasoned conversation and the rejection of knee-jerk responses to complex challenges.

These essays are intended to provoke critically needed conversations between family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and political parties. The book is a call for respectful conversations that consist not just of talking, but also listening fully to what others are saying...conversations that help the continual development of each reader’s perspectives and opinions.

Lee Zacharias and Abigail DeWitt will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 27th at 3 p.m. to present their novels.

Zacharias’ Across the Great Lake is a haunting novel of nautical adventure, love, ghosts, and tragedy on the Great Lakes. In her eighty-fifth year, Fern Halvorson recalls her childhood journey on a great coal-fired ferry in the icy winter of 1936--and the secret she has kept since that ill-fated voyage.

Tammy Billups will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, November 3rd at 3 p.m. She will present her book, Soul Healing with Our Animal Companions: The Hidden Keys to a Deeper Animal-Human Connection. The book explains the unspoken connection between people and their animal companions and how they share the same energetic patterns and emotional wounds. Tammy Billups invites you to explore and deepen this profound relationship, showing how you can co-evolve along with your animal companions, experience unconditional love, and, ultimately, enact healing for both animal and caregiver.

Also on hand will be a representative from Advocates for Animals, a local non-profit whose mission is to work to improve the health and welfare of companion animals and the people who love them in our community through education, empowerment, and resources. To learn more about the work Advocates for Animals does please visit their website.

On Friday, September 21st at 6:30 p.m., Thomas Rain Crowe will return to City Lights Bookstore to present his book Starting From San Francisco. In his book, Crowe explores the dimensions of a flourishing literary excitement that deserves to be better known: The Baby Beat’s movement. This movement was led by a whole generation of young poets who were nourished by their Beat predecessors. Starting From San Francisco provides many illuminating surprises for those who thought they already knew everything about what Beat was.

To reserve copies of Starting From San Francisco, please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Charles Dodd White will return to City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 20th at 3 p.m.  He will read from his new novel, In the House of Wilderness.  Rain is a young woman under the influence of a charismatic drifter named Wolf and his other “wife,” Winter. Through months of wandering homeless through the cities, small towns, and landscape of Appalachia, the trio have grown into a kind of desperate family, a family driven by exploitation and abuse. A family that Rain must escape.

When she meets Stratton Bryant, a widower living alone in an old east Tennessee farmhouse, Rain is given the chance to see a bigger world and find herself a place within it. But Wolf will not let her part easily. When he demands loyalty and obedience, the only way out is through an episode of violence that will leave everyone involved permanently damaged.

A harrowing story of choice and sacrifice, In the House of Wilderness is a novel about the modern South and how we fight through hardship and grief to find a way home.

Charles Dodd White is the author of three novels and a short story collection. He has been recognized for excellence in Appalachian writing with the Chaffin Award. He has also received a fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his family, and he teaches English at Pellissippi State Community College.