Patricia Sprinkle

Fri., March 19th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Mystery author Patricia Sprinkle gives her readers a change of pace with her newest book, Hold Up the Sky, the story of four women who come together to live on a drought-stricken Georgia farm.

In Hold Up the Sky, Mamie is facing an overwhelming secret; Margaret has lost her home; Billie can no longer care alone for her disabled daughter; and Maria is living with an untenable choice. When these four women come together to live on a drought-stricken Georgia farm, they must open their hearts, and share their burdens, before they can find the bounty that lies hidden in tough times, and once again see the glorious pattern of meaning in their lives.

About the author:
Patricia Sprinkle was born in West Virginia, but grew up in North Carolina and Florida. She decided in 9th grade that she wanted to be a writer. She attended Vassar College, which had a great creative writing program. After graduation she tested her writing commitment by heading to a Scottish Highland village with only $750, one suitcase, two coats and a portable typewriter. Before the money ran out, she had sold one poem, one article, one short story, and a one-act play. She then moved to Atlanta and started a series of writing-related jobs.

When Patricia married her husband Bob, he looked over their budget and demanded, “Why don’t you write a mystery to pay for all the ones you buy?” It took 13 years, but since her first mystery, Murder at Markham, was published in 1988, Patricia has written twenty mysteries, five non-fiction books, and several novels.

Patricia’s husband is still her encourager and faithful patron of the arts. During their thirty-nine years together they have lived in Atlanta (four times), Chicago (twice), St. Petersburg (twice), Mobile, and Miami. Along the way they had two sons.

Shirley Twiss

Mon., March 29th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Greenville resident Shirley Twiss always longed to be a writer, but for many years this dream took a back seat to her happy life as a wife, mother and teacher. Shirley’s debut novel, Cotton in Augusta, was nominated for the 2009 SIBA Award for Fiction and has proved well worth the wait.

Cotton in Augusta tells the tale of Myra, a sharecropper’s daughter who never knew the joys of childhood or leisure in her adult life. Her struggle was always to make the best of her circumstances to brighten the way for those she loves. Fate, however, has hatched up a different plan.

Cotton in Augusta is not the usual tale of the genteel life of Southern ladies. Rather, it is a story of the true heroines of the South; the ones who struggled against poverty, prejudice, class, and the status of women to raise strong and successful families.

 About the author:
Shirley Proctor Twiss, a true daughter of the South, grew up in Swainsboro, Georgia, a small town surrounded by tall pines and cotton fields. She was an avid listener to the great story tellers of her family. Writing was always a dream, but for many years this took a back seat to her happy life as a wife, mother and teacher.

The author is now retired, a widow, and living in Greenville, South Carolina. She is blessed to have three caring children, five wonderful grandchildren, a really fun great-grandson, a self-centered cat and stories to write.

Ron Rash

Fri., April 30th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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Beloved Southern author Ron Rash returns to Greenville after selling out his previous event with us. He will be reading from his new short-story collection, Burning Bright.

Burning Bright (Ecco, hardcover, $22.99), Rash’s latest short story collection, has been chosen as a Winter/Spring Okra pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

In “Corpse Bird,” a man becomes haunted by a childhood folk tale when a mysterious bird makes its home in his neighbor’s tree and their daughter suddenly takes ill. In “Back of Beyond,” a pawn shop owner who profits from the stolen goods of local meth addicts—including his own nephew—comes to his brother’s aid when he’s threatened by his son. The pregnant wife of a Lincoln sympathizer alone in Confederate territory takes revenge to protect her family from a menacing wayward soldier in “Lincolnites.”

Rash masterfully crafts a patchwork of luminous stories, rich in beauty, suspense, and violence, that draw from the mythical, mysterious, and rawness of the people and the landscape of Appalachia.

About the author:
Ron Rash is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Serena, which was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and three collections of stories, including Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice a recipient of the O. Henry Prize, Rash teaches at Western Carolina University.

Fri., May 7th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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Meet Ann B. Ross, beloved author of the Miss Julia series. In Miss Julia Renews Her Vows (Viking, hardcover, $24.95), the 11th book in the series, Ann Ross’s feisty Southern heroine must do a little detective work while at the same time show her husband, Sam, that there’s life left in their marital batteries.

Sometimes even Miss Julia just wants to go to bed and hide under the covers. Her husband, Sam, wants them to attend marriage enrichment classes. Could their marriage be in a poor state? Even worse, the psychologist leading the sessions is Dr. Fred Fowler—a man Miss Julia could go forever without seeing again and one she’d certainly rather not introduce to Sam.

But she can’t stay in bed for long, even if she wants to. Someone has knocked Francie Pitts in the head and put her in the hospital. Francie didn’t see her attacker, but she sure smelled her. She recognized Etta Mae Wiggins’s perfume, Shania Twain by Stetson. It’s up to Miss Julia to clear the air.

About the author:
Ann B. Ross holds a doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and has taught literature at the University of North Carolina–Asheville. She is the author of ten previous novels featuring the popular southern heroine Miss Julia. She has three children and five grandchildren and lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina. 

Karen White

Wed., May 12th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Karen White returns for her second Book Your Lunch event with us. She’s a funny and fabulous speaker as well as an award-winning Southern author. Her 12th book, On Folly Beach (NAL, paperback, $15.00) releases on May 4th.

To most people, Folly Beach, South Carolina, is simply the last barrier island before the Atlantic. To some, it’s a sanctuary, which is why Janie Hamilton’s mother encourages her to buy the local book store, Folly’s Finds, hoping it will distract Janie from the loss of her husband in Afghanistan.

Janie is at first resistant, but intrigued after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly’s Finds, and decides to take the plunge. The store’s seller insists on one condition: Janie must allow Lulu, the late owner’s elderly sister, to continue selling her bottle trees from its back yard. Historically, bottle trees were brought by African slaves to the American South, and Janie had grown up with one in her backyard, and it has always been a symbol of refuge to her.

As details of a possible murder and a mysterious disappearance during World War II are revealed, the two women discover that circumstances beyond their control, sixty years apart, have brought them together, here on Folly Beach. And it is here that their war-ravaged hearts can find hope for a second chance…

About the author:
Karen White is having a banner year for several reasons: her eldest child will be graduating high school in May and starting college, and it will also mark the 10th anniversary of her being a published author. Karen first knew she wanted to be a writer in 7th grade. But it was not until after graduating cum laude with a BS in Management from Tulane University, getting married, and having children that she finally set down to write her first book. She has since published eleven award-winning novels, including The Girl on Legare Street which debuted at #31 on the New York Times bestseller list. She has four more books scheduled including the next two books in the Tradd Street series (in 2011 and 2013, respectively) and On Folly Beach, which releases May 4th.

Mindy Friddle

Wed., May 26th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Greenville novelist Mindy Friddle is also a gardener and her horitcultural passion seeps into her writing. Her second novel, Secret Keepers (Picador, paperback, $14.00) is set in a small Southern town — a land of neglected Confederate monuments, faith-based shopping centers, and overgrown, seedy estates — where a once-grand heirloom garden is covertly rescued, revealing a divided family’s secret lives of turmoil and yearning.

Mindy Friddle says “I started Secret Keepers with an image of Emma Hanley, gazing at a family portrait, stuck in her hometown. Like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, she yearns to flee. Just when it looks like she might get her wish, her husband heads off to his morning coffee klatch with a gaggle of adoring widow women, and . . . well, Emma’s dream of travel is stymied. Again.  And then she has her hands full juggling the demands of her adult children. Things get really prickly when a motley group of gardeners, the Blooming Idiots, unearth some strange botanicals and the Hanley family’s secrets. Nature, it turns out, is a major character in Secret Keepers. In the course of the novel — through regret, broken hearts, and grief — humor winds like a flowering vine. Publisher’s Weekly says the Hanley clan, ‘is a genuinely quirky lot with its own unlikely ideas of happiness.’  Strange bedfellows, indeed.”

About the author:
Mindy Friddle is a native of South Carolina, where her family has lived for more than two centuries. Her people were lintheads who toiled in textile mills and hardy farmers with poems in their hearts. After earning a BA from Furman University, Mindy worked as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers before enrolling in graduate school at the University of South Carolina, where she studied with James Dickey and William Price Fox. She later earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. Her first novel, The Garden Angel (St. Martin’s Press/Picador), a SIBA bestseller, was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program in 2004, and was a National Public Radio Morning Edition summer reading pick.  

Her book reviews have appeared in the Charlotte Observer and her column, “Author to Author,” featuring interviews with authors, have been published in the Greenville Journal. A Master Gardener, she lives in Greenville, South Carolina where she directs the Writing Room, a community-based nonprofit program she founded in 2006 to bring writers to Greenville for paid seminars and readings. Secret Keepers, coming in paperback from St. Martin’s Press on May 25th, is her second novel.

Book Your Lunch shout out to Mindy:
Greenville novelist Mindy Friddle has been a superb author advisor to the Book Your Lunch event series and the series would never have gotten off the ground without her help. Many thanks, Mindy!
- Jill Hendrix, owner of Fiction Addiction and founder of the Book Your Lunch author event series

Mary Alice Monroe

Thurs., June 10th, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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Join us for a rare chance to meet bestselling Southern novelist Mary Alice Monroe. Her latest novel, Last Light Over Carolina (Pocket, paperback, $15.00), has been nominated for the 2009 SIBA Award and was both a New York Times and SIBA bestseller in hardcover.

On an otherwise ordinary day, in a small shrimping village off the coast of South Carolina, a boat goes missing. The entire town rallies as all are mobilized to find the lost vessel. Throughout the course of one day, flashbacks of Bud Morrison, the captain on board, and Carolina, his wife, reveal the happier days of a once-thriving shrimping industry juxtaposed with the memories of their long term marriage. Through wonderfully evocative storytelling and keen insights into the human heart, Mary Alice Monroe intimately portrays the complex and emotional relationships shared among family, friends, and the natural world that sustains us all.

About the author:
Mary Alice Monroe claims much of her creative spark came from her large and very close family.  Growing up, she and her nine brothers and sisters wrote and performed in their own plays and musicals.   Her teachers recognized her talent and encouraged her to write.  She first pursued nonfiction and studied journalism.  Later, she was the assistant to the General Editor for Encyclopedia Britannica and worked with world famous artists, authors, composers, and scientists as EB III was developed. 

After an extended trip to Japan with her husband, Mary Alice studied Asian culture in earnest.  She was awarded a fellowship and earned her master’s degree in Asian Studies and became bilingual in Japanese.  Later, she helped establish a government-funded English as a Second Language program for Southeast Asian refugees.  Working with immigrants and helping them integrate into American society, Mary Alice co-authored an English-language survival text.   

Not until years later did fate intervene.  When her doctor confined her to bed for the final months of her pregnancy, Mary Alice’s husband handed her a yellow notepad and pencil and urged her to write the novel she had always dreamed about.  Knowing she might never again have that gift of time, she wrote and wrote.   “I gave birth to a baby and a book,” says the author.

A dozen books later, Mary Alice has found her voice in fiction.  Although known for her intimate portrayals of women’s lives, her writing has gained added purpose and depth with her move to the Lowcountry.   An active environmentalist, she draws themes for her novels from nature and the parallels with human nature, thus drawing attention to various endangered species and the human connection to the natural world.     

Mary Alice is  involved with several environmental groups and is on the board of the South Carolina Aquarium.  Her work with these groups provided the inspiration for  her novels THE BEACH HOUSE, SKYWARD, SWEETGRASS, SWIMMING LESSONS, her children’s book, TURTLE SUMMER,  TIME IS A RIVER, and LAST LIGHT OVER CAROLINA.   She is currently working on her new novel, due out in spring 2011.

George Singleton

Wed., June 23rd, 2010 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls SC author George Singleton, “[the] unchallenged king of the comic Southern short story.” In addition to being a critically acclaimed author of 2 novels and 4 short-story collections, George is also a creative writing teacher. His most recent book is a nonfiction advice guide to writers: Pep Talks, Warnings, and Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom and Cautionary Advice for Writers  (Writer’s Digest Books, hardcover, $17.99).

Toddlers bang around hitting walls, tables, chairs, the floor, and other people, trying to find their legs. Writing fiction is a similar process. Sometimes it might take a while before the story gets some balance and moves forward. Sometimes the story takes off as if motor-driven, then crashes into something not foreseen or expected. Learning to be a writer is all about finding your legs, and doing your best to convince onlookers that you know what you’re doing and where you’re going.

In Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds, acclaimed Southern story writer and novelist George Singleton serves up everything you ever need to know to become a real writer (meaning one who actually writes), in bite-sized aphorisms. It’s Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil meets Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. It’s cough syrup that tastes like chocolate cake. In other words, don’t expect to get better unless you get a good dose of it, maybe two.

Accompanied by more than fifty original full-color illustrations by novelist Daniel Wallace, these laugh-out-loud funny, candid, and surprisingly useful lessons will help you find your own writerly balance so you can continue to move forward.

About the author:
George Singleton was born in Anaheim, California and lived there until he was seven. He then grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina. He graduated from Furman University in 1980 with a degree in philosophy, and from UNC-Greensboro with an MFA in creative writing. Singleton has taught English and fiction writing at Francis Marion College, the Fine Arts Center of Greenville County, and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He has been a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina and UNC-Wilmington, and has given readings and taught classes at a number of universities and secondary schools. He is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

George Singleton has published short stories in a variety of magazines and journals including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Playboy, Southern Review, Glimmer Train, Esquire.com, and so on. His stories have been anthologized in eight issues of New Stories from the South, and also in 20 Over 40, Surreal South, Writers Harvest 2, They Write Among Us, and Behind the Short Story. His non-fiction has appeared in Bark and Oxford American, and has been anthologized in Best Food Writing 2005, Dog is My Co-Pilot, and Howl. He has published four collections of stories: These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel; and two novels: Novel and Work Shirts for Madmen.

He lives in Pickens County, South Carolina, with the clay artist Glenda Guion and a number of stray dogs and one cat.