Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston, SC


Trouble the Water with Jacqueline Friedland, Wed., Oct. 24, 6 pm

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Join us Wed., Oct. 24, 6:00 pm to celebrate the release of Jacqueline Friedland‘s debut novel Trouble the Water (SparkPress, pb., 352 pp. $17).

Set against the vivid backdrop of Charleston twenty years before the Civil War, Trouble the Water is a captivating tale replete with authentic details about Charleston’s aristocratic planter class, American slavery, and the Underground Railroad. Abigail Milton was born into the British middle class, but her family has landed in unthinkable debt. To ease their burdens, Abby’s parents send her to America to live off the charity of their old friend, Douglas Elling. Just as she begins to grow comfortable in her new life, she overhears her benefactor planning the escape of a local slave―and suddenly, everything she thought she knew about Douglas Elling is turned on its head.

Jacqueline Friedland holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from NYU Law School. She practiced as an attorney in New York before returning to school to receive her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York with her husband, four children, and a tiny dog.

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Mississippi Vegan with Timothy Pakron, Sat., Oct. 27, 5 pm

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Join us Sat., Oct. 27, 5:00 pm to celebrate the release of Timothy Pakron‘s debut cookbook Mississippi Vegan (Avery, hb., 288 pp. $35).

Inspired by the landscape and flavors of his childhood on the Mississippi gulf coast, Timothy Pakron shares 125 plant-based recipes, all of which substitute ingredients without sacrificing depth of flavor and reveal the secret tradition of veganism in southern cooking. Finding ways to re-create his experiences growing up in the South on the plate, Pakron looks to history and nature as his guides to creating the richest food possible.

Timothy Pakron is a passionate cook, artist, and photographer, and the creator of the blog Mississippi Vegan. Before devoting himself to the culinary arts, he spent time as a fine artist in Charleston, South Carolina, and New York City. He currently lives and works in New Orleans.

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Winter in Paradise with Elin Hilderbrand, Mon., Oct. 8, 5:30 pm

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Join us Mon., Oct. 8, 5:30 pm to celebrate the release of Elin Hilderbrand‘s new novel Winter in Paradise (Little, Brown and Co., hb., 320 pp., $28).

Winter in Paradise has everything that readers have come to know and love about an Elin Hilderbrand novel, plus a healthy dose of intrigue. Irene Steele’s idyllic life is shattered when she is woken up by a late-night phone call. Her beloved husband has been found dead. As Irene investigates the mysterious circumstances of her husband’s death, she is plunged into a web of intrigue and deceit belied by the pristine white sand of the Caribbean beaches of St. John.

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.

 

 

 

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This Will Only Hurt a Little with Busy Philipps, Sat., Oct. 20, 7 pm

Monday, September 17, 2018

Since falling in love with Charleston while filming Vice Principals, Busy Philipps has returned with her family many times. Join us in welcoming her back to the Lowcountry, Sat., Oct. 20, 7 pm, at the Charleston Museum, as we celebrate the release of her book This Will Only Hurt a Little (Touchstone, Oct. 2018, hb., 320 pp).

Tickets include a hardback copy of This Will Only Hurt a Little, pre-signed by the author. 

Moderator TBA.

About the book: A hilarious, heartfelt, and refreshingly honest memoir by the beloved comedic actress known for her roles on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek, and Cougar Town who has become “the breakout star of Instagram stories…Imagine I Love Lucy mixed with a modern lifestyle guru” (The New Yorker).

“You guys!! Busy is a legit writer with a voice as clear as a bell. This book is honest, funny, intimate, and well-observed by a person who has observed some sh*t.” —Tina Fey

“Judy Blume meets Karl Ove Knausgaard meets one brave woman from Arizona. On the page, Philipps’ toughness shines through—a rare and feminine ethical code; devoted and blunt. It’s a thrill to watch her stumble right up until the very moment she storms the f*cking gates.” —Miranda July

Busy Philipps is an actress best known for roles in cult TV classics like Dawson’s Creek, Freaks & Geeks, Cougar Town, ER, and most recently, HBO’s Vice Principals. She has appeared in fan-favorite films such as Made of Honor, I Don’t Know How She Does It, He’s Just Not That Into You, White Chicks, and The Gift. She also was one of the writers of the hit film Blades of Glory. Busy lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two daughters.

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A Curious Matter of Men With Wings Book Launch Party with F. Rutledge Hammes, Sat., Sept. 29, 5 pm

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Join us Sat., Sept. 29, 5 pm to celebrate the release of F. Rutledge Hammes’s debut novel A Curious Matter of Men with Wings.

A Curious Matter of Men With Wings tells the story of the Walpole family who fled their sorted past and escaped to one of the nearly 2,000 uninhabited Sea Islands off the Carolina coast. The novel opens with the two Walpole boys taking their little sister out on their johnboat for the first time to pirate the waterways for beer and loose change. In the process, their little sister goes overboard and appears to have drowned, until two men with gigantic wings swoop down and carry her body away into the sky. The news of her disappearance hits the family particularly hard, and the mother goes so far as to fashion herself wings and tries to fly. The Walpole boys set off in search of their little sister and, in the process, discover the truth behind the centuries-old Gullah tale of the Flying Men as well as numerous other mysteries native to the South Carolina Sea Islands.

Hammes himself was born here in the Lowcountry, where he fell in love with the waterways, the people and the folklore that inhabit the Sea Islands. His whole life, he has been writing about the Charleston area and Sea Island culture, and for the past decade, he has been teaching those young writers who will keep our lush storytelling tradition alive. He earned his MFA in fiction from Old Dominion University, has had numerous short stories, essays and poems published in various journals and magazines around the country, and is a contributing writer in several books. He is also the 2019 South Carolina Arts Commission Prose Fellow and is presently Director of the Creative Writing program at Charleston County School of the Arts, the most awarded middle- and high-school writing program in the nation.

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Author Luncheon for the Release of Our Prince of Scribes: Authors Remember Pat Conroy, Fri. Sept. 21, 12 pm

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Join us Fri., Sept. 21, 12 pm for lunch at Halls Signature Events (5 Faber St.), as we celebrate the release of Our Prince of Scribes (UGA Press, hb., 320 pp., $30), a new anthology of essays on Pat Conroy.

Tickets are $64 for the three-course luncheon and book.

Get tickets here.

Conroy’s was a messy fellowship of people from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he’d left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The book’s contributors include Pulitzer Prize winners Rick Bragg and Kathleen Parker; Grammy winners Barbra Streisand and Janis Ian; Lillian Smith Award winners Anthony Grooms and Mary Hood; National Book Award winner Nikky Finney; James Beard Foundation Award winners Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart; a corps of best-selling authors like Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; longtime Conroy friends Bernie Schein, Cliff Graubart, John Warley, and Walter Edgar; Pat’s students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more.

Each author in this collection offers a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a vibrant, multifaceted portrait comes to life and sheds new light on the writer and the man.

 

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Local Book Launch Party for Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005, Sat., Sept. 22, 5 pm

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Join us Sat., Sept. 22, 5 pm to celebrate the release of a new poetry anthology called Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005.

Edited by Furman faculty members Gil Allen, Jeffrey Makala and Bill Rogers, Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005 anthologizes the writings of 46 contemporary South Carolina poets. The anthology’s contents were previously published in national poetry journals, chapbooks or single-authored works. As such, the anthology is the best survey and summary of the writings of South Carolina poets since the previously-published 2005 Ninety-Six Press poetry anthology.

Many of the poets selected will be here to promote the book, including: Gil Allen, Mike Bassett, Emily Davis-Fletcher, Linda Ferguson, Vera Gómez, Ann Herlong-Bodman, Ellen Hyatt, Jacquelyn Markham, Rick Mulkey, Frances Pearce, Emily Rosko, and Marjory Wentworth.

For more information about the book, or about the South Carolina poetry archives, contact Kathleen Hamlin at 864-294-2191 and kathleen.hamlin@furman.edu.

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A Bright and Pleading Dagger Book Launch with Nicole Rivas, Sat., Sept. 8, 8 pm

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Join us Sat., Sept. 8, 8 pm as Nicole Rivas will be here to read from her debut chapbook of short stories called A Bright and Pleading Dagger (Rose Metal Press, pb., 44 pp., $12).

A dazzling and incisive collection of twelve flash fictions illuminating the varied lives of women and girls, A Bright and Pleading Dagger immerses readers in its subjects’ complex experiences with desire, selfhood, and omnipresent danger. A pizza shop worker goes on a series of visceral dates with her gynecologist; a slighted lover coughs up a forgotten childhood toy; an artist unknowingly becomes the subject of an intrusive admirer’s lust; a woman has a heated staring contest with the world’s oldest man. Powerful and precise, Rivas’ stories highlight the unreality within the real, simultaneously evoking humor, outrage, and awe.

Nicole Rivas is from Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. A Bright and Pleading Dagger is her first chapbook. Her fiction has appeared in Passages North, The Journal, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Georgia Southern University in Savannah. More information can be found at www.nicolemrivas.com. 

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Living Waters Book Launch Party with Ed Waldrop, Sat., Sept. 1, 5 pm

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Join us Sat., Sept. 1, 5 pm as local photographer and first-time author Ed Waldrop will be here to discuss his debut Living Waters.

Living Waters is the story of AJ McClellan, born in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He was raised and nurtured along her creeks and waterways. Tragic events in AJ’s young life tested him deeply, but it was the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City that moved him to action. Determined to serve in his country’s defense, AJ joined the Army right out of high school, eventually doing two combat tours in Iraq. He would later leave the Army a broken man, emotionally and spiritually. He lived a vacant life in central Texas until an unexpected death in the family brought him home and began a redemptive journey for him of new life, new love, and new hope.

Ed Waldrop was raised in Charleston, SC, the son of a Navy veteran. Waldrop is an enlisted Air Force veteran himself. He later completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees and became an ordained minister. He served as a VA chaplain from 2003 to 2015, specializing in palliative care and mental health. During that time, he also pursued work toward a doctorate in pastoral care and counseling. Waldrop has worked extensively with combat veterans and their families, as well as with thousands of non-combat veterans suffering in many other ways.

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Slow with Brooke McAlary, Wed., Aug. 15, 6 pm

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Join us Wed., Aug. 15, 6 pm, as Brooke McAlary will discuss her book Slow (Sourcebooks, hb., 288 pp., $26), hosted by the Ready Club and Jessica Murnane, author of One Part Plant.

Once upon a time, it became clear to Brooke McAlary that the key to happiness was discovering a simpler, more fulfilling existence. She put the brakes on her stressful path, and reorganized her life to live outside the status-quo, emphasizing depth, connection and meaningful experiences. Alongside Brooke’s affirming personal stories of breaking down and rising up, Slow provides practical advice and fascinating insights into the benefits and challenges of the slow life, such as:

―Decluttering to de-owning
―Messiness to mindfulness
―Asking why, to asking where to now?

Slow is an inspirational guide on creating a life filled with the things that really matter, and is meant for anyone seeking peace, meaning, and joy in their otherwise rapid lives. Slowly―of course.

Brooke McAlary is a slow-travelling, gutsy shiraz-appreciating writer who, after being diagnosed with severe post-natal depression in 2011, embarked on a one-woman mission to cut out the excess in her life and reconnect with what was really important. She is now immersed in the Slow Living philosophy, and makes it her mission to help others define and achieve their slow living goals.

She writes the blog Slow Your Home, and hosts and produces the podcast, The Slow Home Podcast. She is currently slow-travelling her way around North America with her family.

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