Party like it’s 1982.

Contemporary Charleston 2010: Influences

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Many customers noticed the mad scramble of handwritten sheets of notebook paper covering the counter recently. Blue Bike staff and volunteers were busy compiling, culling, typing and editing poems written at Burke High School this past fall. (It’s sort of our version of Simon, Randy, Kara and Ellen going through all those polaroids during Idol Hollywood Week.)
 
The fourth volume of the Burke lit mag, So-Called Whisper  is back from the printer. Seven local writers, including BBB owner Jonathan Sanchez, led workshops with 180 kids – It’s called LILA’s Poets in the Schools, a program under the auspices of the College of Charleston.
 
If you’d like to know how you can help keep the poetry alive, or just to read some great stuff, come pick up a copy at the store. For just a taste, go right here, – don’t miss Carter’s poem.

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Mount Pleasant’s Nicole Seitz, author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass, Trouble the Water, and A Hundred Years of Happiness will discuss her newest novel. Saving Cicadas is the story of Priscilla Lynn Macy, the single mother of two daughters, Rainey Dae, 17, who has Down’s syndrome, and Janie Doe, a precocious eight-year-old. When Priscilla discovers she’s pregnant, she quits her job, packs up her famly and hits the road, eventually ending up at her ancestral home in Forest Pines, S.C.

Seitz, who also paints the watercolor covers of all of her books, lives in Mount Pleasant with her husband and two children.

Batt Humphreys’ first novel Dead Weight is set in 1910 Charleston, based on a true story about a murder of a Jewish merchant and the black man wrongly accused of the crime. A Georgia native, Humphreys began a career in television news in Charleston in the early eighties. As a senior producer for the CBS News in New York, he managed the coverage of the first hours of the morning of September 11, several wars, elections, and as a reporter covered hurricanes, executions and more murders than he cares to remember. Humphreys and his wife Laura currently live on a farm outside Charleston, along with horses, dogs and cats of varying populations.

The talk and luncheon will be at an Upper King area restaurant (to be announced), followed by a dessert-and-champagne book signing at the bookstore, 420 King St.

Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, 12 – 2 pm, $35. Advance reservations required. For tickets please call 843.722.2666 or buy online here.

Can’t make the luncheon? Order signed copies of the books here.

signed copies will ship after March 14

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Blue Bicycle Books welcomes renowned food writers Matt and Ted Lee, signing copies of The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern, Sun., Mar. 7, 2 – 4 pm.

The local boys-made-good will close out the weekend of the Charleston Food and Wine Festival with a sidewalk peanut boil on King Street.

We first met Matt and Ted when they were fresh out of college, working for VH1 in New York and coming home regularly to run their mail-order business out of an office in the Confederate Home.

Fifteen years later they are still selling boiled peanuts, Duke’s Mayonnaise, and Piggly Wiggly t-shirts to exiled Southerners everywhere. They are also now frequent contributors to the New York Times dining section and have won two James Beard awards for The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (Norton, 2007, hb., $35, 589 pp.).

Their second book explores recipes that indulge in the flavors of the Deep South through healthy and everyday ingredients. More than 100 accessible recipes add their own twist of sophistication: cherry tomato and soybean salad, easy ambrosia, caesar salad with catfish “croutons,” to name a few. Simple Fresh Southern (Clarkson Potter, 2009, hb., $35, 255 pp) also offers instructions on a variety of techniques, ranging from smoking to cheesemaking. (And it has a blurb from Amy Sedaris!)

Can’t make it? Buy a signed copy right here.

[Signed copies available March 8]

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A big Blue Bike thank you to Pat of course, plus to Sean, Edwin, Whitney, Olive, Bill, Linda, Alex, our wonderful staff and especially to the more than 300 very patient people who came out on a cold and rainy Saturday.

(They’ve been flying out of here but we still have signed copies of most of his books, call us or order online here.)

Signing books at the store, they marked them with a ‘Gatlin County Library’ stamp, and Jonathan gave out the third clue to the virtual scavenger hunt, so check out their blog to be a part of the search.  We were so happy to host them in Charleston and look forward to the next installment, as well as the upcoming Richard LaGravenese movie.

The whole staff read Beautiful Creatures, and we’re keeping a keen eye out for any Caster activity creeping down into Charleston — keep you all posted.

K & M with Bukowski, Kerouac, Harper Lee — some of their (and Lena’s) favorites

Order signed copies here!

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Set in a fictional small town near Summerville, the book is getting a national push from publisher Little, Brown and has been very well received critically.

Garcia and Stohl live in LA but share a passion for all things Southern, especially Harper Lee, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor. They wrote Beautiful Creatures on a dare from some teenage friends, students of Kami’s who then kept urging the new authors for more chapters.

“Looking back, we wrote it sort of like the serialized fiction of Charles Dickens,” Garcia says. “Turning in pages to our teen readers every week. When we were getting texts in the middle of the night from teens demanding more pages, we knew we had to finish.”

Now the story of Ethan Wate and his mysterious, beautiful new friend Lena was just named number 5 on Amazon’s Editors’ List of the 100 books of 2009 (Wolf Hall, the Booker Prize winner, was #3). It was the top young adult book on the list.

Garcia and Stohl are arguably the most innovative and dynamic promoters we’ve ever seen (Their blog has profiles booksellers and librarians, trivia give-aways, candy give-aways, and a playlist of the main character’s favorite songs). They came through Charleston on a pre-release tour last spring and visited the Blue Bike, you can see details and pictures of their visit here.

Garcia and Stohl will visit Ashley Hall and Burke High Schools and then sign copies at Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King St., Thurs. Jan. 21, 2010, 4 – 6 pm.

Pre-order a signed copy here, and we will ship it after the signing.

Renowned silhouette artist Clay Rice will cut personal silhouettes and sign copies of his book The Lonely Shadow  (Joggling Board, 2009, hb., $19.95) on Thurs., Oct. 22, 3 – 6 pm.

Taught by his grandfather Carew, Clay Rice is a 21st century folk artist and a Lowcountry treasure. Watching him cut a child’s silhouette in five minutes has been called performance art in itself. His national touring schedule keeps him on the road often, cutting more than 10,000 children’s silhouettes a year, and so his events here in Charleston are rare.

We expect slots to fill up quickly, to book an appointment for a personal silhouette, call us at 843.722.2666.

*Her sister-in-law is former Charleston poet Jessica Bundschuh, who along with her husband Steffen are Evelyn’s godparents.