A tour in the South: postcards

At a panel, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
trade show, Raleigh, North Carolina.
My events there were Moveable Feast and a panel.

Reading from Maze of Blood at City Lights,
Sylva, North Carolina.
Photo by Ally Vickery.

Putting the mike back on for Q & A
With singer-songwriter Rebekah White,
photographer and designer Ansel Olsen
and our host, painter Mark Sprinkle.
Photo: Tracie Meadows

The Makers Series, Richmond
Photo: Mark E. Sprinkle

Mid-way break, Saturday workshop, Richmond
Photo: Mark E. Sprinkle

Photo: by Mark Sprinkle

Notes from the road, with poems--

See prior post for event news...

Detail of Dark Movements Toy Theatre
showing forest and the Mari Lwyd
by artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins

If you're interested in keeping up with my poetry, there are now four poems online at Journal of Mythic Arts that come from the new manuscript inspired by Yoruban praise poems. In addition to the two editor Midori Snyder posted last week, I now see "Night Journey from Kingfisher," a poem inspired by the view of Kingfisher Tower in Otsego Lake that I see from my writing room window, and also "Praise for Dark Movements Toy Theatre," a poem that came out of my friendship with Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales, who has beautified many of my books with his art. And he does make the most delicious toy theaters ever!

"Prothalamion for Linnet" 

"Kingfisher" 

"Night Journey From Kingfisher" 

"Praise for Dark Movements Toy Theatre"  

All is well, despite one major tire blowout and one allergic reaction (oh, the road, the road!), and I had a great time doing events at the Southern Booksellers Alliance Trade Show in Raleigh and soon will be heading off to Richmond for a number of events connected with the Makers Series. 

Thank you to Mary Beth Kosowski and Jenny Waters Toole of Mercer, and hosts Gail MacIntosh and Professor Michael Poteat in Greenville.

SIBA, Makers Series, City Lights

In this post, my events at: the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance in Raleigh, North Carolina; Makers Series events in Richmond, Virginia ; and City Lights in Sylva, North Carolina

  Southeastern Indie Booksellers Alliance trade show

Triangle Reads GOES BOGO 

 Spend the day with two dozen authors. 

Sunday, September 20, 2015 

Noon - 5 PM | the Hilton North Raleigh/Midtown 

Tickets: $99 (buy one, get one free, each includes lunch and a $15 voucher for books!) 

Seating is limited to 100 people. 

9:00 AM – 12 Noon – Exhibits OPEN - Grand Ballroom 

“Ingram Booksellers Center” Open 

Gratitude to Inkreadible Sponsor Ingram Content Group! 

Here are my events:

Noon – 2:00 PM – The Moveable Feast of Authors - Salon E Room 

Emcee: Wanda Jewell, SIBA Executive Director

&

2:00-3:00 Salon B 

Coloring Outside the Lines panel 

 and cocktails later 

and more

Deadline to Register: SEPTEMBER 19th

The Makers Series | Sojourn

“Sojourn” is a word that captures the idea of wandering and travelling far from home, but also lingering and even resting in foreign lands. To sojourn is to willingly stay, engage, and invest in a place or community, even when we recognize that our presence there is temporary and we may always be strangers. Sojourning is related to the idea of “exile,” but carries more of a sense of being sent into that foreign land more than being sent out from a true home. Exiles and sojourners both fervently seek for signposts on their journeys—for direction from the one who has laid out the road ahead. While the language of being spiritual travellers or “resident aliens” should strike a chord with all those who follow Jesus in our secularizing, post-Christian era, it is particularly appropriate when describing the lives and careers of many artists, perhaps especially those who are Christians.

Join us for the next Makers Series evening on Friday, September 25th, at 7:00 p.m. at Third Church (600 Forest Avenue) as we hear from three artists (including designer/photographer Ansel Olsen, singer/songwriter Rebekah White, and poet/novelist Marly Youmans) who have followed roundabout paths to their current creative work. They have also sought to provide signposts for other travellers, too, even as they have discovered them for themselves. RSVP at the Facebook event here.

What is the Makers Series?

The signature program of MakeRVA’s collaborative outreach to and through Richmond’s arts communities, each edition of The Makers Series brings together three “makers”—a writer, a visual artist, and a musician—to discuss their history and practice as artists and believers, touching on a unifying theme. In a coffee house setting with refreshments available throughout, each guest presents for 20 minutes, followed by a moderated conversation between the three and the audience, seeking to find commonalities between each maker’s experiences and to draw out insights about faith, culture, and creativity.

If you're curious about my other events on the Makers Series weekend (I'll be at a workshop and more), see the Events page.

Marly Youmans Returns with a New Novel

Former Cullowhee resident, Marly Youmans will return to City Lights Bookstore on Friday, October 2nd at 6:30 p.m. She will read from her new novel, Maze of Blood. In Conall Weaver, the mundane world and the wonders of the imagination collide and shoot out sparks. Inspired by the life of pulp writer Robert E. Howard, Maze of Blood explores the roots of story and the compulsions and conflicts of the heart in a Southern landscape. Author Midori Snyder says, “a haunting tale of dark obsessions and transcendent creative fire, rendered brilliantly in Youmans' richly poetic prose."

Event date: 

Friday, October 2, 2015 - 6:30pm

Event address: 

3 East Jackson St.

Sylva, NC 28779

Maze of Blood (Hardcover)

By Marly Youmans

$24.00 

ISBN: 9780881465365 

Availability: On Our Shelves Now 

Published: Mercer University Press - September 2015

Word frolics in Norfolk

In September I'll be doing an event at the SIBA trade show in Norfolk. And now I've added an open-to-the-public reading with Luisa Igloria. It'll be my first event for the new book--and I think for hers at well. We've planned to get together for years, and now an event is finally happening. We shall read and eat (and frolic and drink chipotle lime margaritas with our feet on Alice-in-Wonderland tuffets! Something like that...)

Double Trouble: 

A Book Launch and Reading Celebration

featuring Luisa Igloria and Marly Youmans

4:00-5:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 20th

Café Stella
1907 Colonial Avenue
Norfolk, Virginia

We both have brand new books--Glimmerglass (novel) and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (poetry collection.) You know that idiom about hints, put a bug in someone's ear? If you have a book-reading friend in Norfolk, please put a go-to-reading bug (about the size of a pencil eraser) in his/her ear...

And here's a prose poem from Luisa's Night Willow, recently out from Elizabeth Adams's Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal. (They also published Thaliad, so we have one publisher in common.) I'm reading Night Willow now.

Night Watch

And if I say heat, expected rain, lassitude--the hollows of my bones begin to mimic the throats of brittle plants. I was seized by thirst, reading a catalogue of inks: morning glory, transparent blue as raindrops on its cheek; moonlight, brazen crimson of azaleas. Purple berries, named after the lady-in-waiting who wrote the first novel. The names of women were not even recorded in her time. I think of her, restless on her sleeping mattress, mining the indigo shade of night after night for illumination. Green sentinels of bamboo; ochre fields, stalks bursting with grain--each pointed like a nib.