If you cannot read this email, click here.

Thursday | March 3, 2011 | Volume 1 | Issue 6

Book News
Donald Davis is Okra Pick
Spring is in the Air

Author News
Clyde Bolton Receives Cason Award
Author Brett Friedlander Stars at UNC-NC State Showdown
Upcoming Performances of Edith Pearlman’s Short Stories

Blair Insider News
The SIBA Book Awards Long List
Betsy Teter Talks to the Nation
Blair Staffer Goes on Animal Adventure

BOOK NEWS

Donald Davis is Okra Pick
Donald Davis’s first new book in six years—Tales from a Free-Range Childhood—joins the list of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s recently announced Okra Picks for Spring 2011. “Okra Picks” is a list of a dozen fresh titles that SIBA Indie Bookstores choose to hand-sell. 

Click here for the complete list.

A review in the March issue of Booklist said of Tales from a Free-Range Childhood: “These nostalgic tales are filled with the stuff of fondly remembered boyhood, from braces to broken bones, from enforced babysitting to trips to the grandparents’ farm…sweetly good-natured and often quite funny. Davis operates in the tradition of the late Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story)."

Davis, who makes approximately 300 storytelling presentations annually, will be appearing in bookstores throughout North Carolina in April and May. For his full tour schedule, click here.

Tales from a Free-Range Childhood is now available in various formats—hardcover, paperback, and as an e-book. In addition, three stories from this collection—“The Little Rat,” “Go Look It Up,” and “Too Much Hair”—are available individually for Kobo, Nook, and Kindle readers.

Spring Is in the Air
When the temperatures in Piedmont North Carolina soared into the sixties last weekend, it seemed like everyone headed to their local gardening store to load up on plants and mulch. With the anticipation of spring comes the release of The Successful Gardener Guide: North Carolina by Toby Bost and Leah Chester-Davis.

On March 24, Toby Bost will host the launch of their new book at Old Salem Museum and Gardens in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The event begins at 5 p.m. with a slideshow presentation from Toby Bost, who is a consulting horticulturalist and field faculty emeritus of N.C. State University’s Cooperative Extension Service. Toby has been a popular speaker on gardening topics in the Carolinas for years. His presentation will be followed by refreshments and a signing at T. Bagge Merchant in Old Salem—and you will be able to browse the offerings at Old Salem’s garden shop next to T. Bagge.

Since gardening season is now upon us, be sure to check out Toby’s blog at http://successfulgardener.wordpress.com .

For a chance to win a free copy of The Successful Gardener Guide: North Carolina, send us your answer to the quiz question below. All those who answer correctly will be entered in a drawing to win a free copy of the book. We will announce the winner on Facebook and Twitter next Friday, March 11.

When is the best time to prune crape myrtles?
A. Crape myrtles should be liberally cut back in the fall, after they lose their leaves.
B. Crape myrtles should not be pruned as their blooms occur on old wood.
C. Crape myrtles should be pruned a minimum of six inches in early March, as blooms occur on new wood.

AUTHOR NEWS

Clyde Bolton Receives Cason Award
Clyde Bolton, author of Hadacol Days (NewSouth Books), a memoir about growing up in the South of the 1940s and 1950s, has been named the recipient of the 2011 Clarence Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing from The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences.

Bolton had a forty-six-year career injournalism. He was a sportsreporter and columnist for The Birmingham News for forty-one of those years. For thirty-one years, he wrote four sports columns a week. He is also the author of sixteen books. His first, in 1972, was The Crimson Tide, and he went on to write others about Auburn and Georgia football and Alabama basketball. Hadacol Days is his most recent work.

Author Brett Friedlander Stars at UNC-NC State Showdown

Brett Friedlander’s day job requires that he cover ACC basketball for the Wilmington (NC) Star-News. It’s a tough assignment, but someone has to do it. At the February 23 confrontation between the University of North Carolina Tarheels and the North Carolina State Wolfpack, Brett was captured on film as UNC’s shooting guard, Dexter Strickland, leapt over press row. Brett is the sportswriter in white who is protecting his laptop.

Brett, along with Robert Reising, is the author of Chasing Moonlight: The True Story of Field of Dreams’ Doc Graham, which has recently been released in paperback—just in time for baseball’s opening day. Chasing Moonlight was a finalist for the CASEY Award Best Baseball Book of the Year. It also received the Gold Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year Award in Sports; the Bronze Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) in Biography, and was a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award in Recreation/Sports.

On March 22, Robert Reising will be the guest speaker at an event sponsored by the University of North Carolina-Pembroke Friends of the Library. Dr. Reising is a retired member of the university’s history faculty. For more events for Brett and Bob, see our events page.

Upcoming Performances of Edith Pearlman’s Short Stories
On March 14, the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, will perform Pearlman’s story “The Coat” (one of the stories in her critically acclaimed collection, Binocular Vision) as part of “Selected Shorts Live.” The event will be recorded for later broadcast as part of the award-winning radio series, Selected Shorts. The series of one-hour radio programs features readings of classic and new short fiction. The series is produced for radio by Symphony Space and WNYC Radio. For more info, see http://www.longwharf.org/selected-shorts.

On Sunday, April 3, WordTheatre® in association with NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts will perform short stories by Pearlman, Yiyun Li, and Mona Simpson as part of the four-part series Word Theatre® “Lit by Lulu.” The performance will be followed by a Q&A session and a signing with all three authors. The event will be held in the 5th floor library at Manhattan’s private Soho House. For more info, see http://www.wordtheatre.com/

BLAIR INSIDER NEWS

The SIBA Book Awards Long List

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance recently announced its Long List for the 2011 SIBA Book Awards. The winners, who will be announced in July, will be recognized during the Writers’ Block Auction held during SIBA’s annual trade show, which will be held this year in Charleston, South Carolina, in September.

Among the nominees are three titles that are distributed by Blair: My Only Sunshine by Lou Dischler (Hub City Press, fiction); Checking Out by Tim Peeler (Hub City Press, poetry); and 27 View of Hillsborough edited by Michael Malone (Eno Publishers, literary collections).

We’d also like to send shout-outs to some of the other nominees as well: to Ron Rash (Burning Bright), whose new book of poetry, Waking, will be published by Hub City Press this October; to Isabel Zuber (Red Lily) and Press 53, both friends and neighbors of Blair’s here in Winston-Salem; to Patti Digh (Creative is a Verb), who was one of Carolyn Sakowski’s favorite students when she taught high school decades ago; to Joseph Earl Dabney (The Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking) whose books—Mountain Spirits and More Mountain Spirits from Bright Mountain Books are distributed by Blair; and to two of our favorite Facebook friends—Sharyn McCrumb (The Devil Amongst the Lawyers) and Marshall Chapman (They Came to Nashville).

Betsy Teter Talks to the Nation

If you are a fan of Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know, heard on Public Radio International (PRI) stations, you may have caught the Saturday, February 12, broadcast live from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Betsy Teter, the director of Hub City Press, was one of Michael’s guests.

Nearly one million listeners got to hear Betsy tell the story of the Hub City Writers’ Project. In May 1995, a trio of writers in Spartanburg, began to talk about how they could help preserve a sense of place in their rapidly changing Southern city. What their community needed, they said, was a literary identity. Modeling their organization after the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, they chose the name Hub City because it invoked Spartanburg's past as a 19th-century railroad center and challenged them to make their hometown a center for literary arts.

Since its inception, Hub City Writers’ Project has published more than 300 writers through its publishing arm (Hub City Press), renovated two historic downtown buildings, and given away more than $15,000 in scholarships to emerging writers. It has sold some 70,000 books, opened an independent bookstore (Hub City Bookstore), and provides creative writing instruction to hundreds in the Carolinas and beyond. Hub City Press has won numerous awards, including South Carolina’s Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for the Arts, the SC Governor’s Award for the Humanities, and three first-place IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards.

You can hear a podcast of the show featuring Betsy’s interview with Michael Feldman here.

Blair Staffer Goes on Animal Adventure

While proofreading Animal Adventures in North Carolina by Jennifer Bean Bower, Blair’s vice president of sales & marketing, Angela Harwood, decided she was going to go on her own animal adventure. Angela recaps her adventure below.

            As soon as I read the first entry in Jennifer Bean Bower’s Animal Adventures in North Carolina, I knew I was going to love the book. Hawkesdene House, described as “a luxurious retreat that encompasses twenty-six acres of picturesque beauty in a scenic mountain valley at the town of Andrews,” was the first to offer llama treks in western North Carolina (read the section on Hawkesdene House here). I immediately checked out the website provided in the book (www.hawkesdene.com) and discovered that this “luxurious retreat” was surprisingly affordable, especially in the off-season. I invited two other couples to join me and my husband, Jeff, and we rented the three-bedroom Robinsnest Cabin for the last weekend in February—and prepared ourselves for a winter mountain retreat replete with llamas!
            Although I’d seen pictures of Hawkesdene’s cabins online, I was not prepared for the splendid combination of rugged mountain lodge and luxurious comfort that awaited us. Our cabin featured an enormous screened-in porch with tons of outdoor seating and an eight-person fire pit with complimentary firewood. Did I mention the gorgeous view? Or that Hawkesdene’s grounds border the Nantahala National Forest with access to a number of hiking trails? Oh, and don’t forget the llamas!
            Tempted never to leave the comfort of the cabin, we nevertheless headed out to meet the llamas—Hawke, Dene, Crazy Horse, and Scooter—who are guarded day and night by a loyal Great Pyrenees named Claude. Hawkesdene offers llama treks to the summit of Hawksnest Mountain April–October, where they then serve guests and visitors a three-course meal at the Hawkesdene Pavilion. Since we visited in February, we hiked to Hawkesnest sans llamas. We also enjoyed a two-mile round-trip hike into Nantahala National Forest to a splendid “hidden” waterfall.
            Whether you wish to trek with llamas or not, I highly recommend planning a stay at Hawkesdene. Guests can rent individual cabins, Hawkesdene House itself, or even the entire property for weddings, retreats—or just because. Nearby attractions include the Great Smoky Mountain Railway, horseback-riding adventures, fishing in the “trout-fishing capital of North Carolina”, the amazing Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, and more.

To plan your own animal adventure, preorder Animal Adventures in North Carolina here (books will be available in March) or visit your favorite local bookseller to reserve a copy now. If you can’t wait until your book arrives,check out this list of the top ten animal adventures you don’t know.

This newsletter is published and distributed by:

John F. Blair, Publisher
1406 Plaza Drive
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103
1-800-222-9796 | www.blairpub.com

You are receiving this newsletter because you have signed up to do so. To unscubscribe, click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this page.

If you would like to offer feedback or comment on any of the posts in this newsletter, please email blairpublishing@yahoo.com. We'd love to hear from you!