| BRUCE B. LAWRENCE Monday, April 27, 7:00 p.m. Who is Allah? offers a vivid introduction to the heart of Islam and a unique approach to understanding Allah, the central focus of Muslim religious expression. Drawing on history, culture, theology, politics, and the media, Bruce B. Lawrence identifies key religious practices by which Allah is revered and remembered, illuminating how the very name of Allah is interwoven into the everyday experience of millions of Muslims. Lawrence, a leading scholar of Islam, is the author or editor of many books, including The Qur'an: A Biography and Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden. He is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus at Duke University. ANN HEDREEN Thursday, April 30, 7:00 p.m. Her Beautiful Brain is Ann Hedreen's story of what it was like to become a mom just as her beautiful, brainy mother began to lose her mind to an unforgiving disease. Arlene was a copper miner's daughter who was divorced twice, widowed once, raised six kids singlehandedly, survived the turbulent '60s, and got her B.A. and M.A. at 40 so she could support her family as a Seattle schoolteacher-only to start showing signs of Alzheimer's disease in her late fifties, taking Ann and her siblings on a long descent they never could have anticipated or imagined. For two decades-as Ann married, had a daughter and a son, navigated career changes and marital crises and built a life making documentary films with her husband-she watched her once-invincible mom disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where she was born and grew up; from Arlene's favorite tennis club to a locked geropsychiatric ward, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughter's love for a mother who is lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness. Hedreen will be in the store for a discussion and book signing. CINDY MCMAHON Friday, May 1, 7:00 p.m. Cindy Henry McMahon's family history is a slide show of the turbulent South: a thwarted lynch mob on a Georgia preacher's front porch; the integration of Mercer University and Macon, Georgia's Vineville Baptist Church; Birmingham, 1963; Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march in Selma; Koinonia Farm and the germination of Habitat for Humanity; inner-city activism and counter-culture communities in the woods. After a lifetime of hearing these stories but never fully understanding them, McMahon set out with a map and tape recorder to learn three things: (1) how the Civil Rights Movement and its aftermath shaped-or misshaped-her father; (2) how growing up in a family with this embittered, violent, and then absent father shaped her; and (3) how she survived it all remarkably intact. The result is her memoir, Fresh Water from Old Wells. It weaves together the regional and national events of the volatile 1960s and 70s, her family's tumultuous Southern saga, and the stories of her own quest. McMahon will be in the store to read and sign books. SEAMUS MCGRAW Sunday, May 3 4:00 p.m. Climate change has become one of the most polarizing issues of our time. Extremists on  the left regularly issue hyperbolic jeremiads about the impending destruction of the environment, while extremists on the right counter with crass, tortured denials. But out in the vast middle are ordinary people dealing with stronger storms and more intense droughts than they've ever known. This middle ground is the focus of Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change, a lively, thought-provoking book that lays out the whole story of climate change-the science, the math, and most importantly, the human stories of people fighting both the climate and their own deeply held beliefs to find creative solutions to a host of environmental challenges. Author Seamus McGraw will be in the store for a discussion and signing. AN EVENING WITH AT LENGTH LITERARY MAGAZINE Monday, May 4, 7:00 p.m. A various and talented group of editors and contributors to At Length will be in the store to read and discuss their latest work. At Length is a Durham and NYC-based literary magazine focusing on long-form poetry and prose. http://atlengthmag.com/ In attendance for this evening of all-things-literary will be: - Elaine Bleakney, the author of For Another Writing Back , which Publishers Weekly called "meditative and searching....an evocative consideration of a life." Her writing has appeared in jubilat, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, At Length, and others. She is an editor at large for At Length's art section.
- Meaghan Mulholland's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in At Length, Five Chapters, Playboy, Post Road, and storySouth, among other publications. She is past recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and currently working on a collection of linked stories and a novel set in Sicily.
- Trace Ramsey has written the zine Quitter since 2004. In 2008, he finished their first book, an anthology of the first five issues of Quitter. In 2014, this anthology (Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying) was re-released by Pioneers Press and includes issue number six. Quitter #9 was finished in February of 2015. Trace is currently writing a memoir titled Carrying Capacity. In December 2014, he received a Certificate in Documentary Arts from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is a recipient of the 2015 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Award in Literature.
After the readings, At Length editors Belle Boggs and Jonathan Farmer will lead a spirited and thoughtful discussion. EILEEN FLANAGAN Tuesday, May 5 7:00 p.m. At age forty-nine, Eileen Flanagan had an aching feeling that she wasn't living up to her potential-or her youthful ideals. A former Peace Corps volunteer who'd once loved the simplicity of living in a mud hut in Botswana, she now had too many e-mails in her inbox and a basement full of stuff she didn't need. Increasingly worried about her children's future on a warming planet, she felt unable to make a difference-until she joined a band of singing Quaker activists who helped her find her voice and her power. Renewable: One Woman's Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope is the story of a spiritual writer and mother of two who, while trying to change the world, unexpectedly finds the courage to change her life. With wit and wisdom, Eileen Flanagan shares the engaging journey that brings her from midlife spiritual crisis to fulfillment and hope-and, briefly, to jail.
RUPERT NACOSTE
Wednesday, May 6, 7:00 p.m. In this enlightening book, Taking on Diversity: How We Can Move from Anxiety to Respect, a campus "diversity doctor" relates stories that individuals have shared with him about their anxieties in situations involving people who are in some way different than themselves. Dr. Rupert W. Nacoste regularly counsels students at North Carolina State University about their problems dealing with diversity of all kinds, including of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual-orientation. Here, he shares his most effective techniques for handling the unavoidable realities of being in a neo-diverse community, whether that means in college or America as a nation. The author's proven "safe space" strategy can be applied to the campus, community groups, churches, and workplaces as a means to facilitate positive dialogue about diversity. Dr. Nacoste will be in the store for a discussion and signing. ERIC WILSON Thursday, May 7, 7:00 p.m. Shoot straight from the hip. Tell it like it is. Keep it real. We love these commands, especially in America, because they invoke what we love to believe: that there is an authentic self to which we can be true. But while we mock Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, we are inventing identities on Facebook, paying thousands for plastic surgeries, tuning into news that simply verifies our opinions. This is frontier forthrightness gone dreamy: reality bites, after all, and faith-based initiatives trump reality-based ones, and becoming disillusioned is a downer. In his new book, part memoir, part cultural analysis, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson clarifies this confusion. He draws on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, art, film, literature, and his own life to explore the possibility that there's no such thing as unwavering reality. Whether our left brains are shaping the raw data of our right into fabulous stories, or we are so saturated by society's conventions that we're always acting out prefab scripts, we can't help but be phony. But are some fakes more real than others? Are certain lies true? In lively prose--honest, provocative, erudite, witty, wide-ranging (as likely to riff on Bill Murray as to contemplate Plato)--Keep It Fake answers these questions, uncovering bracing truths about what it means to be human and helping us turn our necessary lying into artful living. JASON BIVINS Friday, May 8, 7:00 p.m.  Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, re-occurring foci, and interpretations. Author Jason Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, and critical commentary, producing a work that argues for the centrality of religious experiences to any legitimate understanding of jazz, while also suggesting that jazz opens up new interpretations of American religious history. Bivins examines themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics. Spirits Rejoice! connects Religious Studies to Jazz Studies through thematic portraits, and a vast number of interviews to propose a new, improvisationally fluid archive for thinking about religion, race, and sound in the United States. Bivins, an accomplished jazz guitarist and N.C. State professor, will be in the store to play music and discuss his book. NEIL SPECTOR Monday, May 11, 7:00 p.m. Dr. Neil Spector, one of the nation's top oncologists, led a charmed life. He was educated at prestigious universities, trained at top medical centers, and had married the woman of his dreams. It seemed too perfect. And it was. In 1994, it all came crashing down. He and his wife lost two unborn children. And a mysterious illness brought him to the brink of death. In his compelling memoir, Gone in a Heartbeat: A Physician's Search for True Meaning, Dr. Spector describes in great detail how he was misdiagnosed and, despite being a medical insider, was often discounted by his fellow physicians. As he recounts his own unorthodox approach to medicine and physician/patient relationships, Dr. Spector encourages readers to never surrender their power to a third party. He tells of courageous patients who served as role models, he concedes that doctors do a disservice to patients when "we treat them like statistics," and he advocates for educated patients who can make informed decisions collaboratively and not simply follow instructions. In Dr. Spector's words: "To recognize that we are in control of our own bodies and destinies can be a powerful step toward true healing." Dr. Spector will be in the store for a discussion and signing. |
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