Tag: indie bookstores

Michael Mewshaw, author of THE LOST PRINCE

February 12, 2019
by Robin Wood

Photo credit: Sean Mewshaw

Join us Tuesday, February 26, at 6pm, as Michael Mewshaw launches his newest book, THE LOST PRINCE, an examination of his friendship with the author Pat Conroy. Pat Conroy was America’s poet laureate of family dysfunction. A larger-than-life character and the author of such classics as The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, Conroy was remembered by everybody for his energy, his exuberance, and his self-lacerating humor.

Michael Mewshaw’s THE LOST PRINCE is an intimate memoir of his friendship with Pat Conroy, one that involves their families and those days in Rome when they were both young—when Conroy went from being a popular regional writer to an international bestseller. Family snapshots beautifully illustrate that time. Shortly before his forty-ninth birthday, Conroy telephoned Mewshaw to ask a terrible favor. With great reluctance, Mewshaw did as he was asked—and never saw Pat Conroy again.

Although they never managed to reconcile their differences completely, Conroy later urged Mewshaw to write about “me and you and what happened . . . i know it would cause much pain to both of us. but here is what that story has that none of your others have.” THE LOST PRINCE is Mewshaw’s fulfillment of a promise.

Michael Mewshaw‘s five decade career includes award-winning fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism and investigative journalism. He is the author of the nonfiction works Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal and Between Terror and Tourism; the novel Year of the Gun; and the memoir Do I Owe You Something? He spends much of his time in Key West.

Praise for THE LOST PRINCE

“In THE LOST PRINCE Michael Mewshaw sets down one of the most gripping stories of friendship I’ve ever read.” —Daniel Menaker, author of My Mistake: A Memoir

“THE LOST PRINCE: A SEARCH FOR PAT CONROY is a book about male bonding rituals and reversals, but it’s also about so much more than that. It’s about how perplexed and inadequately
prepared we can be as characters who pop up in other people’s lives. It’s about unknowability
and its repercussions. It’s a fluidly written, fascinating book about Michael Mewshaw and Pat Conroy caught in the crossbeams of past and present, fated to overlap, bond, retreat, and then—as Mewshaw clearly hopes—to unite in a different configuration a final time.” — Ann Beattie, author of The Accomplished Guest

 

Ann Beattie, author of A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK

February 9, 2019
by Robin Wood

Tuesday, April 9, at 6pm, a book launch  party and book signing with Ann Beattie, author of A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Vulture, The Millions, and O Magazine

A razor-sharp, deeply felt new novel–the twenty-first book by Ann Beattie–about the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets we keep from those we love.

At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere’s covert and overt instruction lingers in his students’ lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. Ben feels the pace of his life accelerating and views his intimate relationships as less and less fulfilling; there seems to be a subtext he’s not able to access. And what, really, did Bailey Academy teach him?

While relationships with his stepmother and sister improve, and a move to upstate New York offers respite from his anxiety about love and work, LaVerdere’s reappearance in his life disturbs Ben’s equilibrium. Everything he once thought he knew about his teacher–and himself–is called into question. Written by one of our most iconic writers, known for casting a cold eye on her generation’s ambivalence and sometimes mistaken ambition, A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCKis a keenly observed psychological study of a man who alternates between careful driving and hazardous risk-taking, as he struggles to incorporate his past into the vertiginous present.

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Ann Beattie has published twenty-one books and lives with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry, in Maine. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Praise for A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK

“Even if you’re not old enough to remember the thrill of reading Beattie’s first-ever story to be published in The New Yorker, you’ll find that the short fiction master’s latest foray into long form is a marvel of wry wit and wisdom.”
—Oprah magazine

“I would read anything by Beattie.”
—Lila Shapiro, Vulture (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)

“How do our charismatic teachers set the stage for the rest of our lives? That’s one of the questions that Ann Beattie tackles in this novel. When a former New England boarding school student named Ben looks back on his childhood, he starts to question the motives of his superstar teacher. Later on, his teacher gets in contact, and Ben has to grapple with his legacy.”
—The Millions (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)

“[Beattie’s] elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad and ultimately enigmatic: as usual.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Gimlet-eyed Beattie has created a stunningly unnerving and provocative tale spiked with keen cultural allusions and drollery. This jarring dissection of privilege and anxiety, gender expectations, lust, ludicrous predicaments, defensive selfishness, moral confusion, and numbing loneliness projects a matrix of angst somewhat countered by the solace and sustenance found in a quiet life far from the grasping, hurried, hostile world. . . . Beattie’s literary reign continues apace, thanks to her stealthily eviscerating insights and disquieting wit.”
—Booklist (starred review)

Artists & Mothers: Talking with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME

February 2, 2019
by Robin Wood

Hearing Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME read from and discuss her novel was a great way to close out a busy January 2019 calendar of events. Conley’s novel about an expat American living in China deals with issues of artistic and personal identity, addiction, marriage, and motherhood.

Elsey, the novel’s protagonist is trying to figure out how to reconcile the divergent needs of marriage, motherhood with small children and art. Her husband suggests a yoga retreat in the mountains where Elsey meets a cast of characters, who, among other things, depict women dealing with different kinds of issues and challenges.

“Elsey’s problem is that she can’t cohere all the parts of herself,” Susan said. Painting and parenting both call for a kind of obsession, focus, that it is hard to divide. Art calls for a kind of recklessness – and more than anything else – for time.

And, though, Susan herself is now the mother of teenagers rather than young children, she says that need for time doesn’t go away. But while children require the alteration of artistic habits, Susan says they have also been a gift to her work as a writer. “A deeper sense of empathy, a more expansive emotional bandwith, I am more committed to my work,” she said.

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

Planting Seeds with Andrew Furman, author of GOLDENS ARE HERE

February 2, 2019
by Robin Wood

Inspired by true events surrounding an historic Florida citrus season and the civil rights struggle, Andrew Furman’s GOLDENS ARE HERE offers a glimpse of the sea changes occurring in Florida and the nation in the 1960s through the prism of one family’s negotiations with the land, their neighbors, and each other. Leading up to his reading and book signing Feb. 6, we had the opportunity to chat with him about his background and new book.

Q: Please tell us a little about how you came to write GOLDENS ARE HERE?

A: I’ve lived here in south Florida for the past 22 years and one of my favorite things to do is hop in the car with my family and visit some of the more scruffy out-of-the-way outposts of our Sunshine State. The seeds for GOLDENS ARE HERE, if I might use a botanical metaphor, originated in one of these trips with my family to the small town of Titusville and its rural outskirts. As I walked the streets of this historic town and visited the remaining orange groves along the nearby Indian River, I found myself imagining what the place must have looked like and meant to the people who lived there in what might be considered the region’s hey-day, the 1960s when the space-race was hitting its stride, the citrus industry was booming, and, as my research would uncover, the Civil Rights struggle was impacting black and white lives in significant ways. It seemed like a rich time and place to direct my creative energies. It wasn’t too long before a cast of characters and a story emerged in my mind that would allow me to engage with the intersections between the social and environmental realms, which has long been a primary interest of mine.

Q: You’ve also written a memoir about Florida? Can you say a little about how you decide to cast a subject as fiction or nonfiction and how you think readers respond to those narrative choices?

A: This is an excellent question that preoccupies much of my attention these days. In fact, I’m currently teaching a graduate writing workshop at Florida Atlantic University entitled, Writing Across Genres, which examines the work of writers (e.g., Colson Whitehead, Marilynne Robinson, Jesmyn Ward) who write both nonfiction and fiction. The aim, ultimately, is for my students to contemplate their own choices, vis a vis genre, more deliberately. Most of my writing—both nonfiction and fiction, and as my answer above suggests—originates in place. From there, I might choose the essay form if I feel that my own personal experiences in and of a particular place stands the chance of resonating with readers in a powerful way, and/or the real-life experience of another person associated with that place demands attention, or if some feature of the place (an animal or plant, say) intrigues me so much that I’m compelled to research and reflect upon this feature in earnest. BITTEN, my recent memoir, documents my experiences coming to know various fascinating aspects of my adopted home state.

I think I turn to fiction when there’s something about a place that inspires me to imagine an entire story and set of characters outside my own personal experiences, when to imagine a place as fully as I desire, I require the freedom of the “make believe” realm. As I review this response, I realize that I’ve positioned fiction, perhaps, as the more “creative” genre. I resist this notion, in theory, as I believe that the essay form can be every bit as creative as fiction, and as some of my most creative work, certainly from an aesthetic point of view, exists within the pages of my essays. But there we are.

In terms of how readers respond to these narrative choices, this is an even tougher question. But if I understand the question correctly, and given all the scandals in the realm of nonfiction lately (James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, et. al.), I will say that I believe that writers enter into a sort of contract with their readers when they purport to write nonfiction, that writers implicitly promise to be telling the truth (not to be inventing characters or events out of whole cloth, for example) and that readers have a right to be disappointed when writers are discovered to have violated these essential terms. In my creative nonfiction classes, my students and I spend a good bit of time brooding over the more nuanced terms of this contract.

Q: If you can boil it down, what’s the top piece you’d give aspiring writers?

A: This one’s easy. Don’t give up! That is, if you love the writing part of writing, keep at it and don’t be discouraged by the obstacles that come your way as you seek publication. I find that many aspiring writers simply don’t realize how many false starts, how many drafts, how many rejections by agents and editors, how many years, in short, go into a typical book. Perseverance pays.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?

A: The best novel I read recently is Richard Powers’ THE OVERSTORY, in which several interconnected characters and plot-lines beautifully evoke the long and tangled relationship between trees and us. On the nonfiction front, I was fascinated and moved by Sy Montgomery’s THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS, which forced me to look at octopuses (not “octopi,” I learned) in an entirely new light, and to rethink my alimentary choices at Greek restaurants and sushi bars!

Finally, upon learning of Mary Oliver’s recent passing (who was living just up the coast in Hobe Sound), I’ve been re-reading many of the poems I’ve so admired over her long career and reading some of her newer work in DEVOTIONS, a fairly comprehensive recent anthology of her poetry.

Q: What are you working on next?

A: Funny that you ask. I’m delighted to report that I’m currently working on a novel manuscript and a related collection of stories set in the Florida Keys! While I don’t like to talk too much about my current projects, I will say that I was inspired by my several bird-watching visits to the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. As some of your readers surely know, this hammock and much of north Key Largo was slated for residential development in the 1970s and 80s, and some construction had ensued. Thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of various environmental groups, including the Izaak Walton League, Friends of the Everglades, and the Upper Keys Citizens Association, led by Dagny Johnson, the land was finally acquired by Florida’s Conservation and Recreational Lands Program. The 2,421 acre park, which I encourage readers to visit, is now home to 84 protected species of plants and animals.

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

Practicing Yoga with Michelle C. Johnson, author of SKILL IN ACTION

February 1, 2019
by Robin Wood

Michelle C. Johnson will read from her book SKILL IN ACTION: RADICALIZING YOUR YOGA PRACTICE TO CREATE A JUST WORLD on Friday, February 8, at 6pm. We had the opportunity recently to ask Michelle a few questions to give you an idea of the concepts she will discuss during her presentation.

Q: Please tell us a little about the links between yoga and social justice work?

A: Yoga is a transformative practice physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The practice of yoga is about more than our individual transformation, it is also about our collective liberation. The principles of yoga invite practitioners to consider how to live in ways that decrease harm, increase being truthful about the cultural context and our social location and to live with an awareness of our devotion to something bigger than us. Given these times, it is important for yogis to consider how they can live into their yoga and transform the world.

Q: How did you come to this combined practice of yoga and social justice work?

A: I was an activist before a yogi. I entered into my teacher training with an anti-racism lens and a liberatory framework. With each introduction of the tenants of yoga I heard justice infused in them. I have only practiced yoga in this country and my experience as a black yoga teacher has reflected my experience as a black woman navigating the dominant culture. Yoga can be exclusive and a I don’t fit the norms of yoga in the U.S. based on race and body type. Given my experience of oppression in the world and oppression in the yoga room I saw the need for the yoga community to begin to explore the ways in which it is exclusive and not living into the universal truth of our oneness. I have had times when I experience liberation on my yoga mat but in the room I don’t feel free because I am the “only one” or I don’t see myself reflected in the class or teacher.

Q: What will people who aren’t yoga practitioners get from your presentation?

A: Justice is created through social change. Each one of us moves on this planet and needs to be thinking about our identities, our power, our privilege and the healing that needs to happen based on the identities that are oppressed by dominant culture. My presentation is for everyone because yoga and justice are for everyone. I speak about yoga as a way of living and being, not as a physical practice. Often the practice begins when we roll up our mat or step off our meditation cushion. Everyone can relate to navigating a culture with an awareness that we are moving in different ways. The presentation is for anyone interested in social change, creating a just world and deepening their understanding of power and privilege.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?

A: EMERGENT STRATEGY by Adrienne Maree Brown
RADICAL DHARMA by Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams
THE HEALING by Saeeda Hafiz

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

Knopf presents: A Conversation with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME

January 28, 2019
by Robin Wood

Publishing company Alfred A. Knopf put together an excellent Q & A with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME to get you ready to meet her in store on January 31 at 6pm.

Q: How would you describe Elsey to readers meeting her for the first time?
A: Elsey is someone you want to talk to at the dinner party, because she’s self-deprecating and also bitingly funny. She can read a room and has a warm smile, and what might really attract you to her is that she’s curious about you and asks good questions. But she doesn’t want you to ask questions about her, because she doesn’t want to give her secrets away. She’s known great success as an acclaimed painter, so she moves through the world with a certain level of confidence on the outside. In this way she seems self-possessed, but by the time we meet her she’s struggling, and her life is unraveling, and she’s trying hard to hide it.

Along with her reading and book signing on Jan. 31, Susan Conley’s ELSEY COME HOME is our current Virtual Book Club pick. Read the book along with us and interact with us on social media by posting and following the hashtag #bbkwbookclub. Share your thoughts and photos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We’re @booksandbookskw.

Read the full Q & A from Alfred A. Knopf at: Conley Q&A

Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH

January 28, 2019
by Robin Wood

Photo credit: Gary A. Rosen

Sunday, February 10, at 2pm, a reading and book signing with Holly Goldberg Sloan, co-author of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH. Meet author Holly Goldberg Sloan and get TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH two days before its official release.

Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of the New York Times bestsellers Counting by 7s and Short, has teamed up with Meg Wolitzer, the New York Times-bestselling author of novels for adults and kids, on TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH, a moving, exuberant, laugh-out-loud novel about friendship and family, told entirely in emails and letters.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Avery Bloom, who’s bookish, intense, and afraid of many things, particularly deep water, lives in New York City. Bett Devlin, who’s fearless, outgoing, and loves all animals as well as the ocean, lives in California. What they have in common is that they are both twelve years old, and are both being raised by single, gay dads.

When their dads fall in love, Bett and Avery are sent, against their will, to the same sleepaway camp. Their dads hope that they will find common ground and become friends – and possibly, one day, even sisters.

But things soon go off the rails for the girls (and for their dads too), and they find themselves on a summer adventure that neither of them could have predicted. Now that they can’t imagine life without each other, will the two girls (who sometimes call themselves Night Owl and Dogfish) figure out a way to be a family?

EARLY PRAISE FOR To Night Owl From Dogfish:

“Featuring a dramatic climax and a host of surprising twists, the novel affirms that families conventional and unconventional are families just the same.” – Publishers Weekly

“The Parent Trap gets a modern makeover in this entertaining and endearing middle-grade novel about two 12-year-old girls, one camp, and a summer that will bond them for a lifetime….A sweet and amusing tale that celebrates diversity while reinforcing the power of love and the importance of family.” – Kirkus

 

Debra Butler, contributing designer to SOME LIKE IT HOT

January 28, 2019
by Robin Wood

Tuesday, January 29, at 6pm, a meet & greet and book signing with Key West designer Debra Butler, contributing designer to SOME LIKE IT HOT.

New design book SOME LIKE IT HOT is a visual masterpiece and offers a peek into the minds of acclaimed Florida interior designers as they discuss their inspiration sources and what truly makes a room. More than 220 vibrant color images capture completed rooms and show a range of décor styles, from fresh takes on traditional to modern to “uniquely Florida.” The editorial is eloquent, presenting personal anecdotes, complex philosophies, and expert opinions in an approachable manner that appeals to readers of varying levels of interest. Words of wisdom leap off the pages to boldly anchor each chapter.

Specializing in custom cabinetry and design since 2006. Debra Butler launched All Out Designs, a home design & consulting business in 2011. Collaborating with other industry professionals and tradespersons to provide her clients with an all-inclusive, superior, high quality result, she opened Debra Butler Design Studio in 2012. Debra offers complete start to finish interior design and remodeling services, including custom cabinetry, countertops, tile, wall coverings, paint, appliances, plumbing fixtures, furniture, lighting, window coverings, original art and accessories.Debra’s inspiration combines her creative and artistic expressions with her client’s personalities and desires to ultimately reflect superior design results.

Contributing designers for SOME LIKE IT HOT range from global sensations such as Fanny Haim, Sam Robin, Juan Carlos Arcila-Duque, Jennifer Garrigues, and Todd Davis & Rob Brown to creative souls like Robert Rionda, Sharron Lannan, and Hillary Littlejohn Scurtis. Exceptional designers Amy Herman, Amy Kelly, Anil Kakar, Brianna Michelle, David L. Smith, Deborah Wecselman, Debra Butler, Eve Glass Beres, Jonathan Parks, Juan Poggi, Judith Liegeois, Kurt Dannwolf & Lachmee Chin, Laura Martzell, Leili Fatemi, Margarita & Cristina Courtney, Pamela Iannacio, Phil Kean, Robert Zemnickis, Sandra Diaz-Velasco, Sarah Zohar, Susan Lovelace and Whitney Bloom divulge their philosophies about style and taste through insider tips and accessible advice, covering everything from how to best begin a project to how to select just the right finishing touch. Many have designed residential spaces for celebrities, dignitaries, politicians, and titans of business, yet each approaches his or her process with a method that is unique to their talent. Several are award-winners, having collected some of their industry’s most impressive titles. But all are artists, drawing on personal and professional experience to consistently deliver environments that perfectly capture their clients’ hopes and wishes.

The featured designers are all based in Florida, from Miami and South Beach to Central Florida and the Panhandle, but many possess histories and cultures that crisscross the globe. Whether you are seeking someone to complete your next major project or searching for a spark of creativity for your own home, SOME LIKE IT HOT has plenty of inspiration as you immerse yourself in the world of beautiful interior design.

Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME

January 28, 2019
by Robin Wood

photo credit: Michael Lionstar

Thursday, January 31, at 6pm, a reading and discussion with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME. ELSEY COME HOME is the January/February 2019 Books & Books @ The Studios Virtual Book Club pick. Bookclub discount available now through January 26th. (Online use code BC20 for 20% off). The event will be followed by a book signing.

“I loved ELSEY COME HOME. The exotic setting, the characters Elsey meets along the way—her husband, her little girls, her dilemma. And the writing, spare and lovely. What more can I say— perfect.” – Judy Blume, Books & Books @ The Studios co-founder.

From the widely praised author of Paris Was the Place — a shattering new novel that bravely delves into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage, and motherhood

When Elsey’s husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we’re done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling passionately for Lukas, the tall, Danish MC at a warehouse rave in downtown Beijing. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as painter, mother, and, especially, wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into desperate unhappiness. So, brochure in hand, she agrees to go and confront the ghosts of her past. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself: from Tasmin, another (much richer) expat, to Hunter, a young man whose courage endangers them all, and, most important, Mei — wife of one of China’s most famous artists and a renowned painter herself — with whom Elsey quickly forges a fierce friendship and whose candidness about her pain helps Elsey understand her own. But Elsey must risk tearing herself and Lukas further apart when she decides she must return to her childhood home — the center of her deepest pain — before she can find her way back to him. Written in a voice at once wry, sensual, blunt, and hypnotic, Elsey Come Home is a modern odyssey and a quietly dynamic portrait of contemporary womanhood.

Maximizing space with Key West Designer Debra Butler

January 24, 2019
by Robin Wood

Don’t just take our word for it. Leaf through a copy of SOME LIKE IT HOT. More than 220 color images from the work of Florida interior designers will give you tons of ideas to create your own Florida style. We caught up with Key West designer Debra Butler, one of the book’s contributing designers, prior to our meet & greet and book signing on Tuesday, January 29, at 6pm, to talk inspiration and storage.

Q: How did you end up in Key West?

A: Sorry, it’s a long but not interesting story. I’m sure, not different from many others. I moved here in 2000, was supposed to be here for a year or so, while I decided on my next city… I never left.

Q: What tips do you have for pulling together a Keys style that isn’t too stereotypically beachy?

A: I don’t really approach design from a beachy or really any trendy perspective. I spend a lot of time working with my clients & learning how they live or plan to use the space. I like to combine natural textures with colors also found in nature. When I juxtapose these with bold accents either material or color & let as much natural light or views become part of the accessories. If we have a lush garden or ocean view to balance beautiful art or unusual piece of furniture even better.

Q: Do you find that your background in custom cabinetry is particularly useful in dealing with small space living?

A: Yes, absolutely. Understanding function and maximizing space & often storage is so important to all my designs.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?

A: Right now I prefer fiction (thrillers & suspense) & books on spirituality… I know I should probably read more design & art… but I haven’t lately… reading is a big part of the time I spend away from work.