N.C. Events: The Lee Bros. & More

Matt and Ted Lee aren’t just a southern sensation; they’re a national one, thanks to regular appearances in Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, GQ, The New York Times, and Martha Stewart Living and on the Food Network too. Their latest book, The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern: Knockout Dishes with Down-Home Flavor, offers possibilities for “the easy, weeknight meal” and promise to be “super approachable for the non-cook,” according to a recent article in the Charleston City Paper down in their own hometown. Today (Thursday, November 5), they’re coming to our neck of the woods with an appearance at 7 p.m. at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop — surely one of the highlights of upcoming events on the book-lover’s calendar (and the foodie’sn calendar too; I’ll admit I’m hungry just thinking about it). The new cookbook was just published earlier this week, and Durham marks the first Southern stop on a tour that runs through mid-December. Needless to say, a great Christmas present (hint, hint).

I’ve already mentioned Roy Williams‘ new memoir, Hard Work, and his tour continues with a stop at the Bull’s Head this afternoon and then elsewhere over the next couple of weeks. Additionally, the Bull’s Head will host author Art Chanskey on Saturday, November 7, with another book on UNC’s basketball program: Light Blue Reign: How a City Slicker, a Quiet Kansan, and a Mountain Man Built College Basketball’s Longest-Lasting Dynasty.

• Annette Dunlap, Frank: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland, America’s Youngest First Lady, on Friday, November 6 at the Fayetteville Barnes & Noble
• Mary Akers, Women Up On Blocks: Stories, and Clifford Garstang, In an Uncharted Country, on Friday, November 6, at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village and again on Saturday, November 7, at Shakespeare and Company Books in Kernersville
• And short story writers Anne Barnhill, What You Long For, and Maureen Sherbondy, The Slow Vanishing, on Sunday, November 8, at McIntyre’s Books.

For a more comprehensive listing of author events and links to individual bookstore’s websites, check out the MetroBooks Calendar here.

N.C. Events: Writers’ Network Conference

The North Carolina Writers’ Network’s annual Fall Conference remains the one must-attend event for writers — especially aspiring writers — throughout the state. And the good news is that there’s still time to register for this year’s conference, which takes place November 20-22 in Wrightsville Beach.

For several years I served on the NCWN’s board and worked twice as the conference chairperson, so I know the kind of work that goes into planning these events. But more importantly, I’ve also been an attendee at the conference, so I can also attest to the myriad benefits and pleasures of the program: the chance to learn from established masters in the field; the opportunity to meet, mingle and network with other writers; a weekend immersed in ideas about craft; and — heck — a beach getaway in the off-season ain’t bad either!

Cassandra King

Friday night’s keynote speaker is bestselling novelist Cassandra King, author of Queen of Broken Hearts, The Same Sweet Girls, and the forthcoming Bridal Falls. Other headliners include Marianne Gingher (interviewed here) leading a Saturday lunch reading by contributors to Long Story Short —  Anthony Abbott, Wendy Brenner, Philip Gerard, and Peter Makuck — and then Gerard again with a musical performance on Saturday evening. Click here for a full list of conference faculty and presenters.

The registration deadline is November 12, so don’t miss out!

N.C. Events: A Preseason Bonus

Can’t wait for basketball season to begin? Well, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill has good news in store for you: Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court, a just-released memoir by Tar Heels coach Roy Williams, co-written by former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Crothers. The book features a foreword by John Grisham and a nice front-cover blurb by Michael Jordan. Bring out the big guns, why don’t you?

At this point, I’ve only been able to sample sections of the book, but I gotta tell you, I’m already drawn in. While the memoir stretches back to Williams’ difficult childhood — an abusive, alcoholic father, a mother struggling to make ends meet — the book itself is framed by the 2009 basketball season. The opening pages find Williams walking down the middle of the road at 4 a.m., worrying about star player Tyler Hansbrough’s injuries and about the demands of the season ahead — how the prospects and expectations were raising the stakes for the entire team. Even knowing about the NCAA tournament win that ultimately ended the season doesn’t lessen the conflict of that nighttime walk or the sense of suspense about the longer path ahead. By the end of the book, when he reflects back on that season as the sweetest because of all the adversity, you really get a sense of what this book is about. The title doesn’t draw solely from that team cheer at the end of each huddle.

As anyone who’s followed his career knows, Williams has made some controversial and much-publicized  decisions in his lifetime, not the least of which were his decisions to stay in Kansas and then to leave Kansas. In the book, he reflects on these decisions and offers some behind-the-scenes reasons for them, much of it related to his family and his past: his mother, his father, his sister, each depicted in gripping, poignant scenes and with often surprising candor.

In advance of the season ahead, Williams will be touring several North Carolina bookstores to discuss the book — surely a must for Tar Heels fans everywhere. Catch him on Tuesday, November 3, at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village; on Thursday, November 5, at the Bull’s Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill; on Tuesday, November 10, at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books; and on Friday, November 13, at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop.

N.C. Events: Mysteries Through Monday

Mysteries take the mainstage at Triangle-area bookstores this weekend, with two appearances by The Deadly Divas, “nice woman who write about murder.” Marcia Talley, newly elected president of Sisters in Crime, leads the group’s outing with her new book, Without a Grave, and she’s joined by Elizabeth Lynn Casey, author of Sew Deadly; Denise Swanson, author of Murder of a Royal Pain; Heather Webber, author of Weeding Out Murder (and of the Lucy Valentine romance series); and Sara Rosett, author of Magnolias, Moonlight and Murder. The group has just begun their swing through North Carolina, and here’s where you can catch them over the next few days:

Friday, October 23

• 10:30 a.m., Coffee with the Divas, The Cary Library, Cary
• 2 p.m., Tea at the Eva Perry Library, Apex
• 7 p.m., The Regulator Bookshop, Durham

Saturday, October 24

• 11 a.m., McIntyre’s at Fearrington Village, Pittsboro
• 2 p.m., West Regional Library, Cary

Sunday, October 25

• 3 p.m., Friendly Center Barnes & Noble, Greensboro

Additionally, don’t miss another bright new name on the mystery scene, Derek Nikitas, with his second novel The Long Division. A graduate of UNC-Wilmington’s MFA program, he’ll be appearing at Wilmington’s Pomegranate Books on Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m.

N.C. Events: New Stories From Jill McCorkle

A.S. Byatt may be the big-name literary celebrity in the Triangle this week, but it’s a homegrown talent that’s really cause for celebration. Algonquin Books has recently published Jill McCorkle’s first short story collection in eight years, Going Away Shoes, and she’s once again proven herself a master of the form. I’ve long been a follower and a fan of McCorkle’s work, and while her novels are undoubtedly impressive, I’ll admit that I take the most joy out of her richly textured, densely packed shorter work — it’s simply a marvel how much life she’s able to pack into such a short amount of space. Even the briefest of the stories here, “View-master” (barely five pages), marks the intersection of several complete lives, and another  of my favorites, “Intervention,” seamlessly weaves past and present — the weight of a lifetime of relationships — into the story of a single momentous evening, one that marks both a turning point and a reaffirmation. That story is also one of the most highly lauded in this collection, having appeared in Ploughshares before being selected both for the Best American Short Stories anthology and for New Stories from the South, and a second story, “Magic Words,” has recently been selected for the upcoming Best American Short Stories.

After reading “Intervention” myself a couple of years back, I had the opportunity to encounter it again when McCorkle read it aloud one evening — and it was just as fascinating that second go-around, maybe even more so since I knew where the story was going and could focus on the small moves that she made to get us there, the layering of information, the small asides that seemed extraneous on the first read but ultimately integral, indispensable. Let that be encouragement for others to check out the new collection and to catch one of the author’s upcoming events: Thursday, October 15, at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines and again on Saturday, October 17, at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village.