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.




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.
Topping this weekend’s list of big literary events in the Triangle are two visits by bestselling novelist Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. The elder Kidd is, of course, the author of The Mermaid Chair and The Secret Life of Bees, and she teams with her daughter her for the new memoir Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, which follows the women to Greece and France on journeys of discovery and bonding. Reviews for the book haven’t been very positive; the
While I wish I could say I had such dates on instant recall in my mind, the truth is that I don’t and I just happened to come across the anniversary when I was flipping through a new book I’d like to recommend here: This Day In Civil Rights History by Horace Randall Williams and Ben Beard. As the title promises, the book offers daily mini-essays on major historical events. Just for a quick sampling: April 16, 1963 was the day that Martin Luther King Jr. released his famous “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” and June 21, 1964 was the day that civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner was murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Milestone dates, of course, and well known, but the book also offers less obvious choices, such as November 9, 1968, when James Brown first performed his song “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” There are 366 essays in all, when you take into account leap-year, and not incidentally, February 29 was the day in 1940 when Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for her role in Gone With The Wind — as the book emphasizes, “the first African American not only win an Oscar but also to attend the ceremony as a guest instead of a servant.”