Author Appearance

Join us at City Lights Bookstore for a conversation between Chloe Maxmin, Canyon Woodward, and Lilly Knoepp on Saturday, August 13th, at 3 p.m. The talk will center around the book Maxmin and Woodward collaborated on, Dirt Road Revival. Their book details the journey of the young Maine politician Chloe Maxmin and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, to win two unlikely elections.  Throughout Dirt Road Revival, Maxin and Woodward demonstrate how Democrats must radically reorient to re-engage with rural voters. 

Chloe Maxmin, hailing from rural Maine, is the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine State Senate. She was elected in 2020, unseating a two-term Republican incumbent and (former) Senate Minority Leader. In 2018, she served in the Maine House of Representatives after becoming the first Democrat to win a rural conservative district.

Canyon Woodward was born, raised, and homeschooled in Macon County, North Carolina. He served as campaign manager for Chloe Maxmin’s successful 2018 and 2020 state senate campaigns. He earned an honors degree in social studies from Harvard College, where the bulk of his education took place outside the classroom, organizing to get Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.    

Lilly Knoepp serves as BPR’s first full-time reporter covering Western North Carolina. She is a native of Franklin, NC, who returned to WNC after serving as the assistant editor of Women@Forbes and digital producer of the Forbes podcast network.  She holds a master’s degree in international journalism from the City University of New York and earned a double major from UNC-Chapel Hill in religious studies and political science. 

Patricia Brandon will visit City Lights Bookstore on Thursday, July 28th at 4 p.m. She will be available to meet folks and sign her book, Rule of Life. Set in 1919 in the mountains of western North Carolina, Rule of Life, is largely based on the real-life Camp Merrie Woode, in Sapphire Valley, NC, and is loosely autobiographical. 

Patricia Brandon is a winner of a Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award and the author of In The Valley Of Achor, her poignant, gritty, and inspirational story of her first year after facing sudden paralysis of her legs. She no longer plays tennis (yet!) but is writing, working on guitar and mountain dulcimer skills, and traveling with friends when she can. She hasn’t given up in the fight to regain her ability to walk!

Terry Roberts will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, August 20th at 3 p.m. He will present his latest novel, The Sky Club.  In it, Jo Salter, a mathematical prodigy from the mountains of North Carolina, remakes herself from a bank teller to a nightclub owner and bootlegger when the Great Depression upturns her life. Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Boone said, “The Sky Club portrays diverse, unexpected facets of the Appalachian region in the years of the Great Depression. It is a novel of climbing--social, financial, emotional, romantic--to a mountaintop, to The Sky Club, to risk and wealth, to danger, and, ultimately, to enduring love."

Terry Roberts' direct ancestors have lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina since the time of the Revolutionary War. Many of them farmed in the Big Pine section of Madison County, a place that to this day is much as it's portrayed in The Sky Club. Roberts' debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and his second novel, That Bright Land, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award as well as the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South. Both novels won the annual Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, given to the author of the best novel written by a North Carolinian. His third novel, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival, was published by Turner in 2018. My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black, a literary thriller set on Ellis Island, was published by Turner in 2021.

Born and raised near Weaverville, North Carolina, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.

Highlands resident, Diane C. McPhail will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, July 2nd at 3 p.m.  Her new novel, The Seamstress of New Orleans is set against the backdrop of the first all-female Mardi Gras krewe at the turn of the century, the acclaimed author's mesmerizing historical novel tells of two strangers separated by background but bound by an unexpected secret--and of the strength and courage women draw from and inspire in each other.

Diane C. McPhail is an artist, minister, and acclaimed author of The Abolitionist's Daughter and The Seamstress of New Orleans. A graduate of Ole Miss, Duke Writers, University of Iowa Distance, and the Yale Writers' Conference, she is a member of NC Writers Network and the Historical Novel Society.

Sharon Wallen will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, July 9th at 3 p.m.  She will present her book, Hatched: How Nine LIttle Chicks Cracked My Shell.  Imagine yourself in the midst of your busy, modern life. There you are - overwhelmed, perhaps even teetering on the edge of exhaustion - when your child asks to hatch a bunch of chicken eggs. Your blood pressure instantly skyrockets when you think of adding even one more thing to your list ... and a quick No falls from your lips.

But what sort of miracles might spring forth if you said Yes! instead?

In this memoir, the author shares 12 powerful lessons that flowed from a transcendent moment of Yes! Join her as the first cracks appear in the confining shell of her normal routines, preprogrammed expectations, and limiting beliefs. Share in a refreshing shift of perspective as the story unfolds, one that allows her to create a new life of greater presence and purpose.

Be prepared for these insights to wake you up to new choices in how you think, how you show up, how you parent, how you eat, how you love, how you make decisions, and how you let go. Formerly published as What I've Learned From Chickens, this expanded edition also tackles the tough issues of addiction and divorce.

We all have more power than we think to live our best life. Let this delightful and authentic story inspire you to begin to live yours.

 CoreyPine Shane will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, July, 30th at 3 p.m. He will present his book, Southeast Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 106 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness.  In this book, herbalist CoreyPine Shane is your trusted guide to finding, identifying, harvesting, and using 106 of the region’s most powerful wild plants. Readers will learn how to safely and ethically forage, and how to use wild plants in herbal medicines, including teas, tinctures, and salves. Plant profiles include clear, color photographs, identification tips, medicinal uses, herbal preparations, and harvesting suggestions. Lists of what to forage for each season make the guide useful year-round.

Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers, naturalists, and herbalists in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

CoreyPine Shane is the founder of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville, North Carolina, and has been seeing clients, teaching classes, and presenting lectures for more than 25 years.

Relationship coach, educator, and speaker, Terry Crosby, will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, June 11th at 3 p.m. She is the author of How to Save Your Fourth Marriage and 100 Words: Small Servings of Whimsy and Wisdom to Calm the Mind and Nourish the Heart.  

Whether you're having difficulty in your first relationship, or you're heading into marriage number eight, How to Save Your Fourth Marriage is for you. It's not so much about how many times you've tried, but rather, do you want your relationship to work or work better? Do you wish to be happier together? If you love each other and don't know how to get along or how to become closer, this information is especially for you. Even if you've given it your best shot and have thrown your hands up, there is still hope.

100 Words is a collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking writings accompanied by beautiful photography. From a tiny bird's song to the death of a spouse, the subjects of these poems and writings will touch you and encourage you. You'll undoubtedly laugh, and probably cry, as you make your way through the pages. You'll be invited to look at life, nature, and relationships differently, more positively, and more hopeful. You'll certainly be reminded of the gift of appreciating small moments.

 Bat Cave, NC author, Mindi Meltz will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, June 18th at 3 p.m. She will present the final book in her After Ever After Trilogy, The Queen’s Rain. Book III entwines the threads of animal and human, feminine and masculine, city and wild, future and past, to integrate that forbidden magic that the heroines first encountered in Book I, then faced more deeply in Book II. Now they must heal their children’s traumas and return this magic to their kingdoms and queendoms, in the hopes that their peoples will evolve and unite, rather than condemn them.

 In addition to the After Ever After Trilogy, Mindi Meltz is the author of two more novels, Beauty and Lonely in the Heart of the World, all published by Logosophia Books. Originally from the coast of Maine, she lives in an off-grid home in the mountains of Western North Carolina with her husband, cats, and goats.

Join us as Jean Hargadon Wehner presents her memoir, Walking with Aletheia on Saturday, June 4th at 3 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore.  Walking with Aletheia relates the author’s experiences of sexual abuse by, at first, a great-uncle, then by a network of priests and others who worked at her Catholic high school in Baltimore, MD. Walking with Aletheia is also about hope and survival. 

“An astonishingly vivid “survival document” by a courageous writer who spent several decades healing from numerous rapes by Catholic priests and cops at a Catholic girl’s high school in Baltimore. This shocking memoir is a “must-read” for all those who are determined to stop the sexual abuse of children.”      — Tom Nugent, author of Death at Buffalo Creek, and a reporter on the Emmy-nominated docuseries The Keepers.

Jean Hargadon Wehner, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, is an advocate for sexual abuse survivors, their families, and the people who work with them. Jean has experience working, educating, and communicating with diverse populations, including faith groups, student groups, and professional associations. She is also a contributor to the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series The Keepers. In addition to her advocacy work, Jean, originally trained as a Spiritual Director, is now a Nationally Certified Reflexologist, Certified Life Coach, and Reiki Practitioner.  

 Poet and naturalist, Brent Martin will present his new book at City Lights Bookstore on Thursday, June 23rd at 6 p.m.  In George Masa's Wild Vision, Martin explores the locations Masa visited, using first-person narratives to contrast, lament, and exalt the condition of the landscape the photographer so loved and worked to interpret and protect. The book includes seventy-five of Masa's photographs, accompanied by Martin's reflections on Masa's life and work.

Charles Frazier, the author of Cold Mountain, said "If I were making a personal top ten list of important Appalachian artists, writers, and musicians, I'd include--along with more well-known names like Doc Watson and Nikki Giovanni--photographer George Masa. Brent Martin's introduction splendidly places Masa and his work in the context of the mountains they both love so much--a perfect match since Martin, like Masa, has spent most of his adult life studying the southern mountains, protecting them, exploring them."

Brent Martin is the author of three chapbook collections of poetry and of Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend, a nonfiction chapbook published by Red Bird Press in 2015. His poetry and essays have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, Pisgah Review, Tar River Poetry, Chattahoochee Review, Eno Journal, New Southerner, Kudzu Literary Journal, Smoky Mountain News, and elsewhere. He has recently completed a two-year term as Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the West. He is also the author of The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present. He lives in the Cowee community in Western North Carolina, where he and his wife, Angela Faye Martin, run Alarka Institute.