Blue Bicycle Books

Join us Thurs., Aug. 1, 5:30 pm as bestselling author Fiona Davis will be celebrating the release of her brand-new novel The Chelsea Girls (Dutton, hb., 368 pp., $27).

From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City’s creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home—a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art, and everything to do with politics. A Red scare is sweeping across America, and Senator Joseph McCarthy has started a witch hunt for Communists, with those in the entertainment industry in the crosshairs. As the pressure builds to name names, it is more than Hazel and Maxine’s Broadway dreams that may suffer as they grapple with the terrible consequences, but also their livelihood, their friendship, and even their freedom.

Spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, The Chelsea Girls deftly pulls back the curtain on the desperate political pressures of McCarthyism, the complicated bonds of female friendship, and the siren call of the uninhibited Chelsea Hotel.

Fiona Davis is the nationally bestselling author of The Dollhouse, The Address, and The Masterpiece. She lives in New York City and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and the Columbia Journalism School.

Join us Tues., July 9, 5:30 pm as Joshua Becker, editor and founder of Becoming Minimalist, will be here to talk about his new book The Minimalist Home (Waterbrook, hb., 256 pp., $20).

In The Minimalist Home, one of today’s most influential minimalist advocates takes us on a decluttering tour of our own houses and apartments, showing us how to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. He both offers practical guidelines for simplifying our lifestyle at home and addresses underlying issues that contribute to over-accumulation in the first place. The purpose is not just to create a more inviting living space. It’s also to turn our life’s HQ–our home–into a launching pad for a more fulfilling and productive life in the world.

Joshua Becker is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of The Minimalist Home, The More of Less, Clutterfree with Kids and Simplify. He is the founder of Becoming Minimalist, a website dedicated to intentional living visited by over 1 million readers every month with a social media following of over 1.5 million. He is also the Founder of The Hope Effect, a nonprofit organization changing how the world cares for orphans. Currently, he lives in Peoria, AZ with his wife and two young kids.

Wed., June 12, 7 pm, we’re closing the store early and trying something new. Our friends Kathryn Budig and Kate Fagan will be taping an episode of their Free Cookies podcast in front of a live audience. Their guest will be Jennifer Pastiloff, author of the new book On Being Human (Dutton, hb., 336 pp., $27).

The show is free and open to the public, but come early to get a good seat.

Centered on the touchstone stories Jen tells in her popular workshops, On Being Human is the story of how a starved person grew into the exuberant woman she was meant to be all along by battling the demons within and winning.

Jen did not intend to become a yoga teacher, but when she was given the opportunity to host her own retreats, she left her thirteen-year waitressing job and said “yes,” despite crippling fears of her inexperience and her own potential. After years of feeling depressed, anxious, and hopeless, in a life that seemed to have no escape, she healed her own heart by caring for others. She has learned to fiercely listen despite being nearly deaf, to banish shame attached to a body mass index, and to rebuild a family after the debilitating loss of her father when she was eight. Through her journey, Jen conveys the experience most of us are missing in our lives: being heard and being told, “I got you.”

Exuberant, triumphantly messy, and brave, On Being Human is a celebration of happiness and self-realization over darkness and doubt. Her complicated yet imperfectly perfect life path is an inspiration to live outside the box and to reject the all-too-common belief of “I am not enough.” Jen will help readers find, accept, and embrace their own vulnerability, bravery, and humanness.

Jen is a frequent contributor to SHAPE Magazine, including SHAPE Escape at Miraval Resort and the Women Run the World initiative. She has been featured on Good Morning America, New York Magazine, Health Magazine, CBS News, and others for her unique style of teaching, which she has taught to thousands of women in sold-out workshops all over the world. Jen is also the guest speaker at Canyon Ranch, and she leads Writing and The Body workshops with author Lidia Yuknavitch, as well as retreats with Emily Rapp Black. Founder of the online magazine The Manifest-Station, when Jen is not traveling she is based in Los Angeles with her husband and son and a cup of coffee.

Join us Thurs., June 6, 5:30 pm as Frye Gaillard will be here to discuss his new book A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost (NewSouth Books, hb., 704 pp., $35).

Frye Gaillard has given us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times―civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the War in Vietnam, and the protests against it. He also examines the cultural manifestations of change―music, literature, art, religion, and science―and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Berrigan Brothers.

Frye Gaillard has written extensively on Southern race relations, politics and culture. He is former Southern Editor at The Charlotte Observer, where he covered Charlotte’s landmark school desegregation controversy, the ill-fated ministry of televangelist Jim Bakker, the funeral of Elvis Presley, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Gaillard has written or edited more than twenty-five books. He now lives on the Alabama Gulf Coast with his wife Nancy.

Sat., June 1, 5 pm, Piccolo Fiction presented by Blue Bicycle Books. Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King Street. Free and open to the public. 843-722-2666.

The festival’s longest-running event exclusively devoted to fiction, Piccolo Fiction presents local and South Carolina authors reading brief short stories. This year’s reading will be in the courtyard beside the bookstore, and, following tradition, each story will begin with the words “I ducked into the alley…”

Since 2000, Piccolo Fiction has featured dozens of S.C. writers, with stories broadcast by S.C. Public Radio and published in the Charleston City Paper.

Featured authors:

Jennifer Hope Choi is the recipient of the Carson McCullers Center’s Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship, the BuzzFeed Emerging Writer Fellowship, and a 2019 Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Her writing has appeared in Best American Travel Writing 2018, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, The American Scholar, Bon Appétit, Lucky Peach, BuzzFeed Reader, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She is the eat & drink editor for Charleston magazine, and is currently working on a memoir.

Tupelo Hassman‘s debut novel, Girlchild, was the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, The Independent, the Portland Review, Imaginary Oklahoma, and Zyzzyva, among others. Tupelo’s second novel, gods with a little g, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Jonathan Rabb is the author of the novels Among the Living (Townsend Fiction Prize Finalist), The Second Son, Shadow and Light, Rosa (Winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize for fiction), The Book of Q and The Overseer. He has published short fiction and non-fiction in a number of magazines and journals, including The Oxford American, The Strand, Opera News and the Journal for Interdisciplinary History. He has taught at NYU, Columbia and currently at SCAD.

Emma Stough will graduate from College of Charleston with an MFA in Creative Writing in May 2019. She is a Midwestern fiction writer who enjoys speculative fiction, photography, and Italian food. She has work forthcoming in Third Coast.