Triangle Reads--at SIBA 2015

Moveable Feast

panel discussion

signing

 final cocktail hour 

More as I know more...

Spend the day with two dozen authors!

Sunday, September 20, 2015 | Noon - 5 PM | the Hilton North Raleigh/Midtown
Raleigh, North Carolina 

Tickets: $99 (includes lunch and a $20 voucher for books!)
Seating is limited to 100 people.

Register here!

Joshilyn Jackson, Someone Else's Love Story Amy Hill Hearth, Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County Bland Simpson, Little Rivers and Waterway Tales Sandra Gutierrez, Beans and Field Peas: A Savor the South Cookbook Bridgette Lacy, Sunday Dinner: A Savor the South Cookbook Damon Tweedy, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine Joan Holub, Mini Myths: Please Share, Aphrodite!, Mini Myths: Be Careful, Icarus!, and The Knights Before Christmas Susan Verde, I Am Yoga Margi Preus, The Bamboo Sword Hester Young, The Gates of Evangeline

Holly Sullivan McClure, Conjuror Marly Youmans, Maze of Blood Diane Michael Cantor, The Poisoned Table Shari Smith, I Am A Town Karen Spears Zacharias, Burdy Deanna Raybourn, A Curious Beginning Billy Coffey, The Curse of Crow Hollow Margaret Maron, Long Upon the Land Johnathan Scott Barrett, Rise and Shine! David Payne, Barefoot to Avalon Kim Wright, The Canterbury Sisters Elin Hilderbrand, The Rumor Robert Beatty, Serafina and the Black Cloak James Farmer, A Time to Celebrate: Let Us Keep the Feast

The Authors | The Books | The Schedule | The Sponsors

Beginning at 12:00 noon on Sunday, September 20th with a "Moveable Feast" -- a sit-down lunch where authors come to sit and talk with you right at your table, Triangle Reads features an afternoon of panels and book signings from some of your favorite -- and soon to be favorite! -- writers. You will also get to tour Trio -- the debut installation of art and music inspired by sixteen beloved works of Southern literature. Read more about the Trio concept on the facebook page.

Books will be for sale from area independent bookstores, and every ticket includes a $20 voucher for the book tables.

A gift outright--

I hope to never again write a post like this one. But every time a friend of mine has quit writing in drought and despair, I have written one.

Too long a sacrifice
Makes a stone of the heart.
   -Yeats

A light rain is blowing past the window, and I can hear the Grateful Dead, playing in Doubleday Field. I'm thinking about a friend of mine, far away, who is a poet. He has had a long journey, holding fast to the arranging of words, but now he has changed.

He has fallen into silence.

Why? He feels the lack of the strong support that readers give to the poet, the sense that there is someone out there and that the poem is not a tree falling in a dead forest. He feels an ebbing of the support that bookstores give--the knowledge that the poet is welcome to read in his home region. Even with all the wonders of the internet, he feels too solitary. (I should add that poets can use another kind of support; that is, their publishers need the encouragement of book purchases saying that others find the poet worthwhile. Without that encouragement, a poet may soon go unpublished no matter how much the publisher loves the work.)

Here's a piece of a letter from my friend. He has published many, many books and chapbooks of poems, but here is what he says:

If I were really rich I’d just buy thousands and give’m away [. . . .] I know it’s a rough business now, but I remember those glory early days of the independent bookstore and their championing of local authors, poetry, and the small press. Not any more. 

It really is one reason I haven’t been able to write since retirement. It seems so fruitless. Hardly any way to reach an audience – and though one would like to think the glory is in the doing (I can remember my youth when I wrote endlessly and didn’t care) but you do want to feel like someone is listening, can listen, has access to listen and ultimately after 50 years it has deadened me.

This poet has been published in book and CD and on the internet, and his words have been lauded and set to music; he has had the affection of many publishers. He is at an age when he ought to be honored and welcome in his home region, often invited to read. Yet he is discouraged, "deadened."

Surely there is still a place for face-to-face encounters with a mature poet who has achieved and published widely, particularly in his home region. Surely there is still a place on our shelves for the book. Part of making the world we want to see and cherishing the best of what already exists is supporting the work.

I'm going to order some books of poems. In the words of another poet, "I shan't be gone long.--You come too."

Transformation bookshops

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/most-interesting-bookstores.htm

Point no. 1: Now I may waste one of my precious wishes by wanting to go to Portugal and Brazil for the afternoon. Point no. 2: Note that the Borderlands Sphynx cat reveals a map to a labyrinth on its forehead (Photograph by massdistraction Flickr.com.) Point no. 3 Definition of disgrace: dis-grace, or turning an altar somewhere in the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion (or most any other part of western Europe) into a tea shop. Additional points may be deposited in the comments box.