Author Appearance

POSTPONED - Lee Lyons will be visiting City Lights Bookstore on .... She will present her latest Novel, Southern Shamrock. Southern Shamrock is a story of a mother consumed with grief at the loss of her son who discovers her family’s Irish Heritage, new aspects of herself, and how to let go. The novel, while being fictional, is heavily inspired by events from Lee's own life, mainly the loss of her own son and her own personal rediscovery of her own Irish Heritage. The novel has received praise from members of the literary community, such as Kathryn Smith, author of The Gatekeeper and other works, who called the novel “engaging”.

Lee Lyons is an author, thespian, storyteller, and resident of Highlands, North Carolina, where she is an active member of the Highlands Writer’s Group and The Highlands Cashiers Players, and shares her stories with the Asheville Storytelling Circle. She is also a member of the Foothills Writers Guild of Anderson, South Carolina. To order a copy of Lee Lyons' new book, Southern Shamrock, please contact us at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina at 828-586-9499

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. CHECK BACK FOR A NEW DATE.

Michael Hettich will be visiting City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, March 21st at 3 p.m. Michael will be presenting his latest book of poetry, To Start an Orchard, a collection of poems with themes about the mysterious and ever-changing relationships between humanity and nature. This collection of poetry has received praise from members of the literary community, with poets like Richard Jones, author of Red Deer, claiming “his dreamlike stories remind us how little we truly see and how often we sleep through the day’s deep revelations.”

Michael Hettich is a poet and has received multiple awards including The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson-Meadow Prize, a Florida Book Award, and several Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. Michael also holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Miami, an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Denver, and a BA in English from Hobart College. His work has appeared in many journals such as Orion, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Poetry East, Alaska Quarterly Review, Witness, The Literary Review and many other notable outlets. 

Michael is a former professor at Miami Dade College, where he served as a professor of English and Creative Writing and Lead Professor in the Honors College. He also served as the co-advisor for their student literary magazine. During his time at Miami Dade, he received several honors including the Mac Smith Endowed Teaching Chair in Environmental Ethics before retiring in 2018. Michael currently resides in Black Mountain, North Carolina with his wife, Colleen. To order a copy of Michael Hettich's new book, To Start an Orchard,  please contact us at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina at 828-586-9499.

POSTPONED. Join writer and horticulturalist Brannen Basham on Saturday, March 28th at 3:00 p.m. where he will partake in a book signing after a discussion of his latest book, A Guide to the Wonderful World Around Us: Notes on Nature. The book takes readers through six chapters that discuss issues and questions related to the environment and humanity and can be read in any order the reader desires. 

Brannen Basham is a writer and horticulturalist living in Western North Carolina. Together with his wife Jill, he owns Spriggly's Beescaping, a small business focused on nature education and habitat restoration. He is a weekly nature writer for The Sylva Herald and also writes for Smoky Mountain Living Magazine. In addition, Brannen presents workshops regularly throughout the Western North Carolina Region and provides pollinator/wildlife-focused landscaping services including design and implementation. To reserve a copy of Brannen Basham’s latest book, A Guide to the Wonderful World Around Us: Notes on Nature, please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina at 828-586-9499.

Join Waynesville author Holly Kays as she presents her newest book, Trailblazers & Traditionalists: Modern-day Smoky Mountain People, on Saturday, Feb. 1, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. Drop by starting at 2 p.m. to get an autographed copy and chat with the author, or wait till 3 p.m. for a book reading and exploration of some of the many fascinating stories contained in the book's pages.

Trailblazers & Traditionalists is a compilation of 33 feature stories previously published in The Smoky Mountain News, where Kays works as a journalist. Each piece highlights the life of a different mountain resident, offering an intimate look into the lives of some of the diverse and fascinating people who call this region home. From the first entry — the story of Ella Bird, one of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ two living Beloved Women — to the last — which is that of Mike Creason, who for four decades has been teaching the children of Western North Carolina to swim — this book celebrates people from all walks of life.

“I wrote these stories over a period of about five years of full-time work as a newspaper reporter, in that span easily interviewing thousands of people and writing hundreds of stories,” said Kays. “The stories that made it into this book are the stories that stuck with me. They’re the stories that resonated with me personally as well as professionally, and I hope they’ll do the same for my readers.”

 Readers will meet Payson Kennedy, co-founder of paddling powerhouse Nantahala Outdoor Center; David and Susan Belcher, beloved former leaders of Western Carolina University; Jennifer Pharr Davis, who in 2011 set the unofficial record for the fastest thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail; and George Ellison, a celebrated writer and naturalist who makes his home in a remote cove adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 In reading a pre-publication version of Trailblazers & Traditionalists, Ellison — himself a prolific and award-winning author — said he was impressed by the contents.

 “This collection will become a popular item in its designated niche, by which I mean the loosely-defined but widely-read category of books with journalistic origins in newspapers and magazines,” Ellison said. “The content and style of Kays’ stories are anything but folksy; indeed, they are remindful of the sort of lengthy and in-depth stories associated with The New Yorker magazine.”

While Trailblazers & Traditionalists features some well-known names, its pages also contain many lesser-known ones that nevertheless have riveting stories attached to them.

Subjects include alpaca farmer Joe Moore, who refers to his animals as “livestock you love”; Danny Gibson, who has spent the past 10 years leading pack mules up and town the trails of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Jim Mills, whose passion for fly fishing has led him to become a sought-after rodmaker; and Darwin Thomas, a heating and air conditioning technician with a second life cultivating greenhouses full of carnivorous plants.

Regardless of their specific interest, readers are sure to find a story — or two, or more — that appeals to them over the course of this book’s nearly 200 pages.

Holly Kays is a journalist and author who makes her home in the mountains of Western North Carolina. In 2017, she published her debut title, a novel called Shadows of Flowers. Set amid the windswept prairies of Wyoming and rounded mountains of southwest Virginia, the novel follows the story of Virginia native Dana Stullman, whose world turns upside down when her boyfriend dies in a car accident. Becoming lonelier than she could have imagined, Dana finds solace in an unexpected friendship, but her life remains paralyzed until a crisis in the Wyoming wilderness forces her to confront the past and choose her path into the future.

Brian Lee Knopp will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, February 8th at 3 p.m. His book, Mayhem in Mayberry: Misadventures of a P.I. in Southern Appalachia is a fearless, take-no-prisoners account of P.I. culture, an unforgettable portrait of personal loss and failure, and a blistering ride through the heart of Southern Appalachia. This revised 2nd Edition features a cover redesign, a new preface, a superb review by Charles Frazier, a bonus chapter with a story considered too dark to tell in the 2009 edition, and other surprises!

Brian Lee Knopp is a retired private investigator who provided legal support investigations to civil and criminal attorneys for over thirty years. A graduate of the John E. Reid Technique, the country’s preeminent interview, and interrogation program, Knopp held state certifications as both a capital case investigator and a sentence mitigation specialist. He wrote the 2009 best-selling memoir Mayhem in Mayberry: Misadventures of a P.I. in Southern Appalachia (Cosmic Pigbite Press). He also created and contributed to the collaborative novel Naked Came the Leaf Peeper (Burning Bush Press 2011).  Knopp taught composition at Warren Wilson College and nonfiction writing for The Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville. His nonfiction work has appeared in Stoneboat Journal, WNC Magazine, Now & Then, and The Great Smokies Review. His book reviews, essays, and poems have been published in several regional magazines and anthologies. He lives somewhere in the mountains near Asheville with his own pittie, Odin.

UNCA professor, Dan Pierce will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, November 1st at 6:30 p.m. He will present his new book, Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World.  Wiley Cash, the author of The Last Ballad, said of the book, “Tar Heel Lightnin' is by turns illuminating and hilarious. Daniel Pierce is the rare academic who distills history to its most essential elements, ensuring that his readers will come away enlightened and entertained. For North Carolinians, the region we call home may influence our preferences in cuisine and sports teams, but there is no doubt that moonshine is as essential to our culture as pork and basketball. As usual, Pierce holds a mirror up to the South, allowing us to see ourselves, our culture, and our history through the clarity of his prose.”

Paige L. Christie will return to City Lights Bookstore on Friday, November 8th, at 6:30 p.m.  She will present the latest in her Legacies of Arnan series, book three, Long Light. Janny Wurts, author of the Wars of Light and Shadow series, said of the book, "A superbly crafted sequel, Long Light sets the stage on fire for the finale of Paige L. Christie's series--a story that engages and upends the very fabric of myth and stereotype."

Jen Thomas will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, November 9th at 3 p.m.  She will present her historical young adult novel, Our Hearts are the Same.  Kate, the plantation owner’s daughter, and Adamina "Addie," the recently freed slave girl form a beautiful friendship during a treacherous time of havoc. It is 1869, the Civil War is over, and Savannah, GA is looking to be restored again after considerable mayhem. Kate’s relatives are as opposed to this friendship as Addie’s are encouraging. Together, and through unimaginable tragedy, they take life one day at a time being the best of friends and determined not to let tensions tear them apart. Some girls go through a lifetime and do not find this bond within a friendship. Meet Kate and Addie, the girls who defied the odds.

To reserve copies of Our Hearts are the Same please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green will read from her work and take questions from the audience at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 30th, in the Blue Ridge Conference Room at Western Carolina University.  Her work is lively and accessible, both personal and universal.  

Jaki Shelton Green is the first African American and the third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. When he appointed her in 2018, Governor Cooper stated that "Jaki Shelton Green brings a deep appreciation of our state's diverse communities to her role as an ambassador of North Carolina literature. Jaki's appointment is a wonderful new chapter in North Carolina's rich literary history."

Jaki Shelton Green is the author of eight collections of poetry: Dead on Arrival, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, Breath of the Song, published by Carolina Wren Press and Blair Publishers. Her other publications; Feeding the Light, I Want to Undie You are published by Jacar Press. Her poetry has been published in over eighty national and international anthologies and featured in magazines such as Essence and Ms. Magazine. 

Her collegiate and professional experiences include currently teaching Documentary Poetry at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and serving as Visiting Professor for the Carlow University MFA Program; Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University; Teaching for Equity Fellow at Duke University; serving on the NC African America Cultural Heritage Commission; and a host of other positions from the regional to the international. She is the owner of SistaWRITE and co-partner with Dream Yourself Awake and Vertikal Creative Ventures providing writing retreats and travel excursions for women writers.

Her awards include the 2019 NC Humanities Council Caldwell Award, the 2019 American Academy of Poets Laureate Fellowship, 2014 induction into the NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, service as the Poet Laureate of the Piedmont, the 2007 Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina, and the 2003 Carolina Award for Literature (the highest award the state can bestow for significant contributions in science, literature, fine arts, and public service). 

The Poet Laureate’s presentation is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs, the Office of Intercultural Affairs, and the Department of English.  For more information, please contact the Department of English at (828) 227-3268 or Dr. Catherine Carter at 227-3931.

Meagan will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, September 6th at 6:30 p.m. She will be joined by Benjamin Cutler and Andrew K. Clark and they will discuss her debut novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs.  Taylor Brown, author of Gods of Howl Mountain said of Songbirds and Stray Dogs, “Meagan Lucas is a brave new voice in Southern fiction. Songbirds and Stray Dogs packs a double shot of grit and heart, with a story stretching from the beaches of the Carolina Lowcountry to the Land of the Sky and a heroine who doesn’t know the word quit. An unflinching portrait of motherhood, trauma, and the family we make along the way.”

Meagan is a Canadian who found a home in the mountains of North Carolina. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now lives with her husband and their children in Hendersonville, North Carolina. She teaches English at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and is the Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine.