grownups

Art Ramsay will return to City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 25th at 3 p.m. to present the third book in The Wisdom Stone Trilogy. With Illumination of Stones, readers are treated to an enthralling tale as the main characters race a looming global event and face determined adversaries. Hidden at Sacred Sites centuries ago, powerful Wisdom Stones are awaiting

discovery to release their energy. Each Stone has a message of planetary significance to reveal, setting into motion spiritual transformation for all of humankind. The first two books in the series are The Seven Stones of Wisdom and The Tibetan Wisdom Code. By creating this fictional series, Art believes that people can be made aware of spiritual principles in a fun and interesting way.

Art Ramsay's current practice involves working as a Minister of Peace, a Spiritual (Peace) Coach, and seminar facilitator. He has studied and practiced Spiritual Principles for twenty years and brings those experiences to his writing. Through Art's work with people over the years, he found that there are certain aspects of the human psyche that brings stress and a great deal of

Knoxville author, Julia Watts will present her books on Saturday, October 18th at 3 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore. The author of numerous books set in Appalachia, she is also a Lambda Literary Award for her young adult novel, Finding H.F. and last year's Lambda Literary Award finalist and Golden Crown Literary Award winner for Secret City. Her new book, Gifted and Talented is a comic novel about the perils of parenting. To reserve copies of her books, please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

#CashMobSylva

Sylva author, Jenny Bennett, returns to City Lights Bookstore on Friday, September 5th at 6:30 p.m. with her second book, The Twelve Streams of LeConte. The main character of the book lives in Sylva and there are scenes set in downtown, the library and even City Lights Bookstore. Anne Woodrow is on honeymoon in Scotland when fate gives her a slap in the face: right then and there, her new husband falls in love with another woman. Injured and grieving, she returns home alone and conceives of a project of renewal.  She will climb Mt. LeConte in the Smokies by way of the twelve streams that drain its slopes. Its a journey that will prove to be strenuous and dangerous. The Twelve Streams of LeConte brings together mirroring worlds of adventure tales and mountains.  It speaks the language of people who engage the landscape rather than admire it from a distance, and it unapologetically explores the life of a serious reader.  

Photographer and author Tim Barnwell will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 25th at 6:30 p.m. to present his new book, Blue Ridge Parkway Vistas. For those who wonder which mountain peaks they are seeing on the many breathtaking outlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway, this new guide is the book to have. Barnwell identifies the mountain peaks one can see from each overlook, marking the compass heading, distance, and elevation. Major roads, rivers, lakes, and towns are also identified. Designed as a driving guide, Blue Ridge Parkway Vistas, is also a good companion for hikers who wish to identify the names of the peaks viewed from favorite trails.

A noted photographer with over 30 years experience, Barnwell’s photography has appeared in numerous publications, including Time and Newsweek. His fine art photography can be found in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art and other museums across the country. He lives in Asheville, NC.  To reserve a copy of Blue Ridge Parkway Vistas, please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.  

Join us at City Lights Bookstore on Friday, August 8th at 6:30 p.m. as Jeremy Jones explores the culture and history of the Blue Ridge Mountains through song and reading. Performing old-time banjo tunes and reading excerpts from his book Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland, he presents the sounds and stories of his native Appalachian mountains in a blending of personal narrative and folklore. In Bearwallow, his first book, Jones turns his attention to the complex and rich world of his Appalachian past and to understanding how this landscape shaped his own identity. Jones and his wife move into a small house above the creek where his family had settled 200 years prior, and he takes a job alongside his former teachers in the local elementary school. But living at the foot of Bearwallow Mountain after a year in Gracias, Honduras, makes Jones realize he has lost touch with his Appalachian-crafted voice. Thus, he sets out on a search that sends him burrowing into the past—hunting buried treasure and POW camps, unearthing Civil War graves and family feuds, exploring gated communities and tourist traps, encountering changed accents and immigrant populations, tracing Walmart’s sidewalks and carved-out mountains—and pondering the future.

Throughout his book, the parallels Jones draws between seemingly disparate things—like Bearwallow Mountain and Gracias, Honduras—allows him to uncover similarities hidden just under the surface. He meshes narrative and myth, geology and genealogy, fiddle tunes and local color about the briskly changing and oft-stigmatized world of his native southern Appalachians. By doing so, he explores not only the story of his own heritage but also simplistic conceptions of Appalachia and its people. His journey back to the mystical Bearwallow Mountain reveals a peak suddenly in flux.

Jeremy Jones earned his M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. His essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and awarded the Emma Bell Miles Prize. His work appears in numerous journals and magazines, including Crab Orchard Review, Our State Magazine, and Quarterly West. He will be teaching in the English Department at Western Carolina University beginning in the fall of 2014. To reserve a copy of his book please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

North Carolina author and storyteller, Sheri Wren Haymore will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, July 26th at 3 p.m. to present her two novels, A Higher Voice and A Deeper Cut. Her novels feature characters with flaws and she tends to as she puts it, “to squish a character until he pops and see what pours out. Or more specifically, what pours back in.” Her books have been described as a blend of Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks.

Asheville author and “ghostlorist,” Randy Russell will help us celebrate Halloween a little early as he presents his book, The Ghost Will See You Now: Haunted Hospitals of the South on Wednesday, October 29th at 6:30 p.m. The event will take place at City Lights Bookstore. Folks are encouraged to “BYOG,” or bring your own ghost by bringing photos, dressing up, or sharing paranormal experiences.  With The Ghost Will See You Now, Russell has organized a state-by-state guide to known Southern hospital hauntings, including 130 haunted locations and 41 ghost stories.  Russell is the author of the popular, Ghost Dogs of the South, Ghost Cats of the South and Mountain Ghost Stories. To reserve copies of his books please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499 or click the book links below.  

On Saturday, August 23nd at 6:30 p.m. meet Mark Powell as he presents his new novel, The Sheltering at City Lights Bookstore. Powell’s work has been given high praise including Ron Rash calling him “the best Appalachian novelist of his generation.”  Pat Conroy had this to say in the foreword he wrote for Powell’s new novel, “The Sheltering is at once haunting and an act of pure grace. What you notice first when you come to Mark Powell’s fourth novel is his remarkable gift for language, the bleeding edges around his dialogue, the starch and vigor of his sense of place, the sharp delineation of his characters, and a stylishness all his own. He is that rarity among male writers of fiction in that his female characters are as strongly presented as any of his troubled, endangered males. In these spiritually exhausted times, The Sheltering is a philosophical novel with a belief system that collapses in on itself because the membranes of our storm-tossed faith always seem so gossamer and imperiled. Powell’s dexterous novel is deeply spiritual and deeply religious, but in ways that might scare you to death. You find yourself wanting to believe in his characters even as these unreliable pilgrims can no longer hold on to a firefly’s faith in themselves.”

Jon Sealy will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, August 29th at 6:30 p.m. to read from his southern gothic noir novel, The Whiskey Baron. Late one night at the end of a scorching summer, a phone call rouses Sheriff Furman Chambers out of bed. Two men have been shot dead on Highway 9 in front of the Hillside Inn, a one-time boardinghouse that is now just a front for Larthan Tull’s liquor business. When Sheriff Chambers arrives to investigate, witnesses say a man named Mary Jane Hopewell walked into the tavern, dragged two of Tull’s runners into the street, and laid them out with a shotgun. Sheriff Chambers’s investigation leads him into the Bell village, where Mary Jane’s family lives a quiet, hardscrabble life of working in the cotton mill. While the weary sheriff digs into the mystery and confronts the county’s underground liquor operation, the whiskey baron himself is looking for vengeance. Mary Jane has gotten in the way of his business, and you don’t do that to Larthan Tull and get away with it.

Hailed as a “grand new talent” by Bret Lott and a “significant new voice in Southern fiction” by Ron Rash, Jon Sealy has written a haunting debut novel. With its unforgettable characters and evocative setting, The Whiskey Baron is a gripping drama about family ties and bad choices, about the folly of power and the limitations of the law. To reserve a copy please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.