Publisher donates free copies of banned book in Randolph County

If they didn't want to read Ralph Ellison's classic novel, "Invisible Man" before last week, Randolph County high schools students may now be intrigued, following

the Randolph County school board's decision last week to ban the book from school libraries. The board voted after receiving a complaint from a parent objecting to language and sexual content.

On Wednesday, Sept. 25, students will get a chance to own the book, thanks to a former Randolph County resident who arranged to have Vintage Books donate free copies, according to Asheboro's Courier-Tribune.

The books will be distributed free to high school students, as long as they last, at Books a Million in Randolph Mall. Former Randolph resident Evan Smith Rakoff, an editor at Poets & Writers magazine, had the idea for the giveaway.

"Banning any book, but especially a great American novel like 'Invisible Man,' just doesn’t fit the values of the Randolph County I know,"  he told the Courier-Tribune.

A Vintage spokesman said the publisher was happy to help and hoped the attention would bring more readers to the wonderful novel. It will, of course, because it always does when something banned. Book banners never seem to figure that out.

Two Charlotte writers win $10,000 awards

Parkison

 Two Charlotte writers, Aimee Parkison and Kathryn Schwille, are among 11 recipients of N.C. Arts Council literary fellowships for 2013-14.

The N.C. Arts Council awards the $10,000 fellowships to writers every other year to support new works by and creative development of N.C. artists.

Parkison, a UNC Charlotte English professor, is the author of two short story collections, "Woman with Dark Horses" and "The Innocent Party." She has won several writing prizes, including the 2004 Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize from North American Review. Read one of her stories: "Lessons from a Sinoloan Beauty Queen."

Schwille

Schwille, a graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and a former Charlotte Observer editor, has published short stories in various magazines, including one cited for Special Mention, Pushcart Prize. Read one of her stories: "FM 104."

Other fellowship winners and their art forms are:

• Keith Flynn, poetry, Asheville.
• Shirlette Ammons, poetry, Durham.
• Valerie Nieman, poetry, Greensboro.
• Catherine Reid, creative nonfiction, Asheville.
• Leigh Ann Henion, creative nonfiction, Boone.
• Liza Wieland, nonfiction, Arapahoe.
• Monica Byrne, playwriting, Durham.
• Janet Allard, playwriting, Greensboro.
• Preston Lane, playwriting, Greensboro.

New books with North Carolina ties

This month’s book roundup includes new works by authors with varied North Carolina connections. Thomas Healy grew up in Charlotte. Carrie Jane Knowles lives in Raleigh. And Sharyn McCrumb and John Milliken Thompson, who both make their homes in Virginia, have chosen North Carolina as the setting for new historical novels.

“The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed the History of Free Speech in America” (Metropolitan Books; $28).
 Healy recounts how U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes moved from defending the punishment of controversial speech to writing a dissenting opinion that “gave birth to the modern era of the First Amendment, in which the freedom to express oneself is our preeminent constitutional value and a defining national trait.”

Before he became a Seton Hall law professor, Healy grew up in Charlotte, graduated from UNC Chapel Hill and worked as a reporter at Raleigh’s News & Observer. The New York Times says his book “deserves an honored place in the intellectual history of the Supreme Court.”

“Ashoan’s Rug,” (Roundfire Books; $13.95). Knowles’ new novel tells the story of a prayer rug that stretches over time and continents as it passes from owner to owner, inspiring and changing lives.

“King’s Mountain” (Thomas Dunne; $25.99). Bestselling author McCrumb (“The Ballad of Tom Dooley”) draws on research to bring to life North Carolina’s most famous Revolutionary War battle. Historical characters populating the book include some of her own ancestors who fought in the battle.

“Love and Lament” (Other Press; $15.95). Thompson sets this family saga in Chatham County between the Civil War and World War I. “Thompson perfectly captures the Carolina Piedmont’s sights, sounds, and flavors and convincingly depicts the turn-of-the-century South – haunted by the Civil War, and embracing old-time religion and new-fangled machinery and ideas,” Publishers Weekly says.

Book talks and signings

John Milliken Thompson will sign copies of “Love and Lament” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road.
Sharyn McCrumb discusses “King’s Mountain” at 7 p.m. Oct. 3 at Park Road Books; 2 p.m. Oct. 5 at Kings Mountain National Military Park in Blacksburg, S.C.; and 5 p.m. Oct. 7 at Mauney Memorial Library, 100 S. Piedmont Ave. in Kings Mountain.

Bestselling author Nicholas Sparks in Charlotte Sept. 20

Bestselling author Nicholas Sparks will sign copies of his new novel, "The Longest Ride," at 5 p.m. Sept. 20 at Barnes & Noble at The Arboretum, 3327 Pineville-Matthews Road.

Sparks, who has sold more than 90 million books, will only sign copies of "The Longest Ride," and you've got a to buy the book from Barnes & Noble. The store is expecting a crowd, so employees will be handing out free tickets, required for the signing, beginning at 9 a.m. Sept. 20. Check the store for more details.

"The Longest Ride," set in North Carolina, tells stories of two couples -- 91-year-old Ira Levinson and his late wife, Ruth, and a Wake Forest College student named Sophia who falls in love with Luke, a young cowboy.
 As the book opens, Ira is alone and injured after wrecking his car on an isolated embankment.


Sparks lives with his family in New Bern, where he's active in several philanthropic efforts.

Asheville author's memoir recalls a brutal orphanage

One night several years ago, Asheville musician Danny Ellis began writing a song about a time in his life he had long sought to bury. 

One stanza in particular told the essence of his story:

"I’ll be back for you this Christmas,” I could hear my mammy say

And the bitter truth within that lie I’ve yet to face today

When it gets too much for feeling you just bury it somehow

And that eight year old abandoned lad still waits for her right now

The song, “800 Voices,” became the title tune on Ellis’s first DVD, released in 2009. And it led to a memoir, “The Boy at the Gate,” (Arcade; $24.95). First published in Ireland, his native country, the book is out this week in the United States.

Ellis’s memoir recounts a life shaped by the eight years he lived in Dublin’s Artane Industrial School, an orphanage notorious for beating and abusing the boys who lived there. 

He arrived at age eight, abandoned by his mother, and remained until he was 16, when he became a trombonist playing in dance halls across Ireland. 

“The Boy at the Gate” was well-received in Ireland. Early U.S. reviews are also strong. Kirkus Reviews, for instance, praises the way Ellis “uses his story to liberate the voices of otherwise forgotten children.”

That was Ellis’s goal – not to focus so much on the abuse, he says, but on the “courage of the kids who tried to make the best of it.”

Still, the violence he describes is terrifying. When boys get their sums wrong in math class, a teacher whips their hands with a leather strap. When Ellis vomits in class, a teacher beats him. 

But when he joined the Artane Boys Band, music became Ellis’s salvation. The band, famous in Ireland, even played for President Kennedy in 1962, when Ellis was a member. The band, he says, “made the school seem like it was a wholesome place.” 

Ellis, who has lived in Asheville for 15 years, says writing his memoir was one of the most enjoyable creative experiences of his life.  “I would lie in bed with my laptop, close my eyes and go back to the playground,” he says. 

In recent years, Ellis has re-connected with some of his former Artane classmates. But he never found his mom, who left for England after turning her children over to orphanages. “She just disappeared off the face of the earth,” he says.

Ellis will read and perform his songs at 2 p.m. Oct. 5 at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road. 

N.C. authors longlisted for Crook's Corner Book Prize

A dozen authors, including five with N.C. and Charlotte ties, have been named to a long list of finalists for the Crook's Corner Book Prize, a new award for exceptional debut novels set in the South.
 They include:
  "Leaving Tuscaloosa" by Walter Bennett, a retired Charlotte judge who now lives in Chapel Hill.
"Code of the Forest" by Charlotte attorney Jon Buchan.
"A Land More Kind Than Home" by Gastonia native and UNC Asheville graduate Wiley Cash.
"Green Gospel" by Durham's L.C. Fiore.  
"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain, a Chapel Hill native and UNC Chapel Hill graduate.

Other longlisted finalists are Rita Leganski ("The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow"), Lois Leveen ("The Secrets of Mary Bowser"), Ayana Mathis ("The Twelve Tribes of Hattie"), Rhonda Riley ("The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope"), Jessica Maria Tuccelli ("Glow"), Kevin Wilson ("The Family Fang") and Margaret Wrinkle ("Wash").

The new book prize, named for the landmark Chapel Hill restaurant with the pig on the roof,  includes $1,000 and a free glass of wine with every restaurant visit during the award year.

The twelve longlisted finalists were chosen from 68 submissions. In November, judges will announce four finalists. N.C. novelist Jill McCorkle ("Life After Life") will choose the winner in January.

New Carolinas novels for fall reading

For your fall reading list, new novels from Carolinas authors:

“The Governor’s Lady” (John F. Blair; $26.95), by novelist and fo
rmer Charlotte television news anchor Robert Inman. When Cooper Lanier succeeds her husband as governor of a southern state, she faces a dilemma. Her husband, who’s running for president, is trying to control state matters from the campaign trail. But if she doesn’t make her own decisions, she risks becoming irrelevant.
Inman will read and sign copies 7 p.m. Aug. 29 at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road.

“The Life & Times of Persimmon Wilson” (Lystra Books; $16), by Nancy Peacock.
“I have been to hangings before, but never my own.” So begins the story of Persimmon Wilson, a former slave accused of murdering his ex-master and kidnapping the man’s wife. Peacock, author of the New York Times Notable Book “Without Water,” lives in Hillsborough.


“Moonrise,” (Maiden Lane Press; $26.99), by Cassandra King. Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel “Rebecca” inspired this modern gothic tale, which King sets in Highlands. King, whose novels include “Making Waves” and “The Sunday Wife,” lives in Beaufort, S.C., with her husband, Pat Conroy.

“Necessary Lies” (St. Martin’s Press; $26.99), by Diane Chamberlain. Set in rural North Carolina in 1960 and based on true events, this is a tale of Ivy Hart, a teenager struggling to care for her family and a social worker, Jane Forrester, who becomes invested in the family’s welfare. Chamberlain, author of 21 novels, lives in Raleigh.