The Women's National Book Association, Charlotte Chapter
invites you to
"MEET THE AUTHORS"
at
Monday, March 9th, 7:00pm
4139 Park Road, Charlotte
|
|
|
|
Join us for an evening of conversation with three prominent, southern-based authors, invited by the chapter. Each will speak briefly about their new novels, then give opportunity for one-on-one questions and discussion. Wine, refreshments, and a chance to mingle with the authors as well!
|
|
Abigail DeWitt was born and raised in North Carolina but spent summers in the Alps where her mother ran a physics institute. She studied at Harvard University and the Iowa Writers Workshop. She has been cited in the Best American Short Stories anthology, nominated for a Pushcart, and has received grants and fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, the McColl Center for the Arts, and the Michener Society. She currently teaches through the Table Rock Writers Workshop and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville.
|
|
|
|
Over four long years, the Delasalle family has struggled to live in their Nazi occupied village in Normandy. Maman, Oncle Henri, Yvonne, and Françoise silently watched as their Jewish neighbors were arrested or disappeared. Now in June 1944, when the sirens wail each day, warning of approaching bombers, the family wonders if rumors of the coming Allied invasion are true―and if they will survive to see their country liberated. Meanwhile, daughter Geneviève Delasalle in Paris to audition for the National Conservatory, unaware that her family’s home in Normandy lies in the path of British and American bombers. Decades later, Geneviève, the wife of an American musician, lives in the United States. Each summer she returns to her homeland with her children, so that they may know their French family. Geneviève’s youngest daughter, Polly, becomes obsessed with the stories she hears about the war, believing they are the key to understanding her mother and the conflicting cultures shaping her life.
Moving back and forth in time, told from varying points of view, News of Our Loved Ones explores the way family histories are shared and illuminates the power of storytelling to understand the past and who we are. News of Our Loved Ones is a war story that studies the war with the help of the psychological scars its victims suffer from. It is absolutely mesmerizing.”--Washington Book Review, “Best Novels to Read This Fall”
|
|
|
Donna Everhart is a bestselling author who writes stories of family hardship and troubled times in a bygone south. She has received an IndieNext List selection, and an Amazon Best Books of the Month selection for her debut, The Education of Dixie Dupree, a SIBA Okra Pick, and the Southeastern Library Association Award in Fiction for her second novel, The Road to Bittersweet. Her third book, The Forgiving Kind, was a BookBub Editor’s Choice, and an Amazon Best Book in Heartfelt Fiction for February 2019. A native of North Carolina, she resides in her home state with her husband and their tiny heart stealing Yorkshire terrier, Mister. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.
|
|
The Moonshiner's Daughter (Kensington, December 2019). Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to 16 year-old Jessie Sasser’s daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she’s concerned, moonshine caused her mother’s death a dozen years ago. Resenting her father’s insistence that moonshining runs in her veins, Jessie makes a plan to destroy the stills, using their neighbors as scapegoats. Instead, her scheme escalates an old rivalry and reveals long-held grudges. As she endeavors to right wrongs old and new, Jessie’s loyalties will bring her to unexpected revelations about her family, her strengths—and a legacy that may provide her with the answers she has been longing for. Starred Review in PW and Booklist. A Souther Literary Review Book of the Month (Jan 2020).
|
|
|
Susan Beckham Zurenda taught writing and composition for both high school and college for over 30 years. She is currently a book publicist for Magic Time Literary Publicity. A recipient of several regional awards for her fiction, including The South Carolina Fiction Project, The Porter Fleming Literary Competition, and The Southern Writers Symposium, she has also published numerous stories and nonfiction pieces in literary journals. Susan lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
|
|
|
|
Bells for Eli: A Novel (Mercer University Press, March 2020). First cousins Ellison (Eli) Winfield and Adeline (Delia) Green live near and grow up together in small-town Green Branch, SC in the 1960’s and 70’s. Then Eli’s tragic accident changes the trajectory of their lives and of those connected to them. Shunned, even tortured by his peers for his disfigurement and frailty, Eli struggles for acceptance in childhood as Delia devotes herself to defending him. Delia’s vivid and compassionate narrative voice presents Eli as a confident young man in adolescence--the visible damage to his body gone--but underneath hides indelible wounds harboring pain and insecurity, scars that rule his impulses. Bells for Eli is a lyrical and tender exploration of the relationship between cousins drawn together through tragedy in a love forbidden by social constraints and a family whose secrets must stay hidden. "Susan Beckham Zurenda is a vibrant new Southern voice. Bells for Eli will remind readers of Pat Conroy's rich storytelling."--Ann Hite, author of Roll Away the Stone
|
|
|
|
Upcoming WNBA Charlotte Events to mark down...
March Bookclub
Tuesday, March 2nd 7:00pm
Panera Bread, 5940 Fairview Rd., Charlotte. Come out and discuss The Last Year of the War by Susan Weissner (Berkeley). A German American girl and a Japanese American girl sent to the same internment camp during WWII become close friends before each being repatriated, with their families, to the country of their parents, countries neither child has ever known, during the last years of the war. All picks are books selected by the 2020 Great Groups Reads Committee (list).
April Bookclub
Tuesday, April 7th 7:00pm
Panera Bread, 5940 Fairview Rd., Charlotte. Come out and discuss with us, The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (Sourcebooks). Cussy Mary, the daughter of a coal miner, is the last of the blue-skinned people of Kentucky and a Pack Horse librarian in the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression. Because of her blue skin, she suffers significant prejudice and hatred from the people in town but finds much more acceptance from the terribly poor folks in the mountains and hollers that she visits in her role as librarian.
Great Summer Reads from Park Road Books
May 2020 (date tba)
Park Road Books, 4139 Park Rd., Charlotte. Join us as Sally Brewster, owner of Park Road Books, breaks down the best reads for summer and beyond. Hear about recent and upcoming reads and walk away with a curated list of must-haves.
|
|
Follow the WNBA Charlotte on Facebook and Twitter for chapter information and news!
See you on March 9th!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
