Author Appearance

City Lights Bookstore and Innovation Brewing are teaming up to help David Joy celebrate the one year anniversary of the release of Where All Light Tends to Go.

Kim Michele Richardson will return to City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, April 23rd at 6 p.m. She will read from and sign her new novel, GodPretty in the Tobacco Field. This novel is the story of a young girl living in rural eastern Kentucky in the ‘60s. Subjected to grueling labor by her God-fearing uncle, she strives to find a ray of hope in her poverty-stricken town through her own tobacco patch, a forbidden first love, and her home-made paper fortunetellers. A Coal Miner's Daughter meets Winter’s Bone in a tale of tender love and loss which examines the power of the land, crushing poverty, oppression of Appalachian women then, and that which is relevant now. David Joy, author of Where All Light Tends to Go, said, “A voice rich and authentic, steeped in the somber beauty that defines life in the South. Richardson knows this place well, and GodPretty in the Tobacco Field sings of that honesty.”

Kim Michele Richardson resides in the rolling hills of Kentucky where she is a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and an advocate for the prevention of child abuse and domestic violence. Liar’s Bench was her first novel. She is also the author of the bestselling memoir The Unbreakable Child. She is a contributor to the Huffington Post. 

Katy Simpson Smith will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, February 27th at 6:30 p.m. She will present her new novel Free Men. Set in the late-eighteenth-century American South, this novel follows a singular group of companions--an escaped slave, a white orphan, and a Creek Indian--who are being tracked down for murder. Publishers Weekly said, “Evokes the complexity of a fledgling America in precise, poetic language. . . . Rich with insights about history and the human heart.”  She is also the author of the critically acclaimed The Story of Land and Sea which is set on the coast of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War.

Professor and cyclist, Jimmy Guignard will present his book, Pedaling the Sacrifice Zone at City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, November 21st (2015) at 6:30 p.m. Living on 7 acres above the Marcellus Shale – an active gas play in Pennsylvania, Jimmy Guignard has witnessed the gradual transformation of the rural landscape his family calls home into an industrial sacrifice zone. In his new book Pedaling the Sacrifice Zone: Teaching, Writing, and Living above the Marcellus Shale, the English professor and experienced cyclist grapples with the meaning of place and the power of words. From the vantage point of a cyclist, Guignard tracks the takeover, pedaling thousands of miles through Tioga and surrounding counties, where he encounters increased truck traffic, crosses pipeline construction on trails and passes a growing number of flaring gas wells.  Juggling his roles as disinterested professor, anxious father and citizen and reluctant activist, Guignard reveals how the rhetoric of industry, politicians and locals reshaped his understanding of teaching and his faith in the force of language.

The Coffee with the Poet series continues on Thursday, November 19th at 10:30 a.m. at City Lights Bookstore. The November gathering will feature poet Holly Dunlap as she presents her first book, Feet to Water. She lives in the half-river, half-city of Florence, Alabama. She has a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a bachelor’s degree in English from Auburn University. Her poems have been published in journals including The Denver Syntax, BlazeVox in New York, and Illuminations at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.

The Coffee with the Poet series is cosponsored by the NetWest chapter of the North Carolina Writers Network and gathers on the third Thursday of each month at 10:30 a.m. For more information about Coffee with the Poet please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

Sallie Bissell will return to City Lights Bookstore to present her new Mary Crow novel on Friday, September 18th at 7:00 p.m. In A Judgement of Whispers, whispers abound at the ancient Spanish Oak. To those who know how to listen, it tells secrets of vanquished conquistadors, Cherokee witches, and the long-unsolved murder of Teresa Ewing. Whispers also thrive in the town of Hartsville--rumors that Teresa's killer still walks free.

While running for District Attorney, Mary Crow finds the whispers starting to swirl around her. Did one of her friends cover up that twenty-year-old murder? Does her campaign have blood on its hands? As new evidence is discovered, Mary realizes that the only way to save her reputation is to find the true killer and silence the vicious gossip that has trapped so many people in a web of rumors and lies.