Lauren Groff and Deno Trakas read tonight

If you're in the Palmetto State [or even NC], don't miss two fine writers reading from their work tonight for the Reading Room, the Handlebar. 7 pm. In a BAR. With Q&A. Books available for purchase. btw, Lauren gave a great seminar yesterday, on "After the First Draft." More about that--and some great tips-- tomorrow.

Lauren Groff grew up one block from the Baseball Hall of Fame in New York. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including The Atlantic Monthlyand Ploughshares, and in the anthologies Best AmericanShort Stories 2007, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008. She received the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville and has had residencies and fellowships at Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center. Her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (February 2008), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. Her second book, Delicate Edible Bird, is a collection of stories. Both books are published by Hyperion/Voice.

Deno Trakas has supported and been supported by Hub City since its first project and is featured in Hub City’s New Southern Harmonies, a collection of short stories. He has published fiction and poetry in more than two dozen journals, including The Oxford American and The Louisville Review. He is the author of two chapbooks, The Shuffle of Wings and Human & Puny. His novel, After Paris, was a finalist for the James Jones Award for a First Novel, and his play, The Old Man and the Tree, won Harvey Jeffrey’s Original One-act Play Contest at Lander University. Trakas has a master’s degree from the University of Tulsa and PhD from the University of South Carolina. An English professor at Wofford College, he serves as director of the writing center and coordinator of the creative writing program.

SIBA Panels and Spicy Readings

The Southern Independent Booksellers Association held their annual trade show in my fair town over the weekend. I was lucky enough to be on a panel--South Carolina Writers--with novelists Nicole Seitz [Saving Cicadas, out Dec. 1] and Mary Alice Monroe [Last Night Over Carolina]. That's us pictured here: from left, Mary Alice, Nicole, moi. If we look ecstatic, it's because this was AFTER the panel when we headed downtown for some Caribbean fusion and adult beverages.


And speaking of South Carolina... Last night's Emrys Reading Room series featured authors Sue Lile Inman and Robert Inman [NO relation believe it or not] who read from their works, both poetry and prose, and answered questions from the audience. It was a very satisfying evening,by all accounts.

Bob, who lives in North Carolina, read from his work in progress, a novel called The Governor's Lady. The title elicited snickers of course, and he said he might revise part of it-- setting part of it in Argentina. Several of us in the audience were tempted to yell, "You lie!" but we have impeccable manners, we were raised right, and would never do anything so vulgar.

Reading Series: What Makes a Good One?

Author readings: They're happening in bookstores, bars, libraries, and now, private homes [see Poets & Writers article: "thanks to a growing trend in grassroots marketing and publicity, writers in the San Francisco Bay area are reading to packed houses—literally.]

I've been inspired through the years by attending some fascinating readings from authors, and bored by a few readings, as well-- mostly because authors read too long. [I aspire to inspire, but I'm sure I've launched a few yawns in my own readings.]

Now that I'm heading up the Emrys "Reading Room" committee--organizing a local reading series-- I've been pondering how we can punch up the event. We've decided to add a Q&A session after every reading, to encourage conversation about the process of writing. The audience is often eager to learn more about how poets and writers move from idea to printed page. We'll also encourage authors to limit their readings to about 20 minutes, since there are two readers at each event.

Elementary, you say? Well, we've got some other tricks up our sleeves [sorry, but no free wine or beer-- THAT would be a punchy reading series.] We'd like to tape a few minutes of each reading to post online, for example. And encourage the audience to mingle and linger after readings...to buy books, of course, but also to bond.

Anybody have any dreamy or nightmarish tales of author readings--anywhere, anytime? Do tell-- comment or email me. I'd love to know!
Meanwhile, if you're in Upstate SC, don't miss the Emrys Reading Room series, as it kicks off tonight with Brian Ray and Joni Tevis, Monday, Aug. 24, 7 pm at the Handlebar, 304 East Stone Avenue, Greenville, SC 29601. Here's more about the featured authors:

Brian Ray grew up in Georgia and then moved to South Carolina, where he spent summers at a steel plant and went to college at the University of South Carolina. He finished an MFA there in 2007, after three years of plugging away at a novel based on life at the mill and some of the wildest things about Columbia and the Palmetto State. Through the Pale Door (Hub City 2009) won the SC First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for the debut novel. His work has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Big Muddy, New South, Timbercreek Review, and other journals.

Joni Tevis is from Easley, South Carolina, and earned her PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her work has been published in Isotope, Shenandoah, Conjunctions, Pleiades, The Bellingham Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Plenty, and elsewhere. The Wet Collection, her book of lyric essays, was published in August 2007 by Milkweed Editions. In this collection, the narrator navigates the peril and excitement of an outward journey complicated by an inward longing for home. Tevis especially likes to explore relationships – how one element in an environment interacts with other elements. At present, she teaches in the English department at Furman University.

Reading Tonight for Emrys Reading Room

I'm reading tonight for the Emrys Reading Room at the Handlebar in Greenville, SC. I plan to read some scenes from the first and second chapters of Secret Keepers. I'll skip around a little like a stone across a pond-- give a little taste of Emma and her daughter Dora.


I'll be joined by Keith Lee Morris, author of The Greyhound God (2003) and The Best Seats in the House (2004). His latest novel, The Dart League King, was published by Tin House Books this past October.

Here are details from the Emrys website and the Handlebar online calendar.