Dear Gentle Reader,

Happy Halloween!

Last call for tickets for our When Southern Women Cook! Next week, we break bread on Thursday the 7th with a luncheon in the Barn celebrating the release of When Southern Women Cook. Toni Tipton Martin, Morgan Bolling, KC Highsmith and WUNC’s Leoneda Inge will be on hand to discuss this amazing cookbook, which is also a veritable who’s who of Southern women chefs and cooks and heroines of our regional food scene. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

On Saturday, October 9th at 11am we welcome Chad Holley who will be in conversation with Michael Parker. Holley’s novel, Shield the Joyous, is about Michael Haley, a whip-smart seventh grader growing up in rural Mississippi in the early 1980s. He has a precociously metaphysical turn of mind, a brand new girlfriend who won’t come out of her bedroom, and plenty of neighborhood pals to distract him from both. Michael Parker is celebrating the rerelease of his first novel, Hello Down There. Haunted by a secret tragedy, Edwin, son of the richest family in a small Southern town, fights to overcome his addiction to morphine and face the truth that his parents have worked to obscure.

And finally, tickets for both of Donald Davis‘s storytelling events in the Barn are now available. Donald will be here Saturday, December 21st at 11am and Sunday, December 22nd at 2pm. Tickets are $10, and all that money goes to CORA, the Chatham County food pantry. We will also be accepting monetary donations for the Triangle Mutual Aid Society to help with the continued need for help in Western North Carolina, canned goods for CORA, and gently used children’s books for the Chatham Education Foundation. As a state, we have been through a lot this year, so it is especially important to continue supporting those who are still struggling and recovering.

The Usual Suspects,

Pete, Johanna, Sarah, Tyler, Amy, Beth and Keebe