Monday, September 26, 2016

Wine and (pimento) cheese Thursday night!

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"Kryptonite" Pimento Cheese Thursday night
from Jennifer Brule

...and lots more appetizing events on our calendar. Come hear some great writers tell you about their fascinating books.  See our delectable events schedule for the next two weeks below.

And to whet your appetite for a very special event late in October,  click on this link for information about Vivian Howard's book signing/food truck event the afternoon of Sunday October 30. Tickets are going fast!
Now Hiring!
We are looking for a special person or two to help out at the bookshop on Friday and Saturday evenings. Shifts would start at 4:00 or 5:00 and run until 8:30. Other work times are also available, but we are especially in need of folks that can start out working weekend evenings. If you are interested, email us a resume. regulatorbookshop@gmail.com
 Upcoming Events for the next two weeks     

(You can also see our complete events calendar on our website)    
     
Monday, September 26, 7:00 p.m.
Thomas Mullen will read from his new novel, Darktown. The award-winning author of "The Last Town on Earth" delivers a riveting and elegant 1948-set thriller set in Atlanta that explores murder, corrupt police, and strained race relations that feels ripped from today's headlines.

Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers; they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters.

Set in the post-war, pre-civil rights South, and evoking the socially resonant and morally complex crime novels of Dennis Lehane and Walter Mosley, Darktown is a vivid, smart, intricately plotted crime saga that explores the timely issues of race, law enforcement, and the uneven scales of justice.

Thomas Mullen is the author of The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA TODAY. He was also awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction for The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers and The Revisionists. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.

 Thursday, September 29, 7:00 p.m.
Join TV chef Jennifer Brulé at The Regulator Bookshop for the launch of her new cookbook, Learn to Cook 25 Southern Classics 3 Ways. Jennifer will be bringing a big bowl of her "Kryptonite Pimento Cheese" (so named because it is her weakness) and we will have crackers and wine to complete the menu!

Jennifer Brulé is on a mission, southern style, to teach people to cook. Her method: master 25 classic southern dishes, and then, make two variations, one contemporary and one inspired by international tastes. Brulé's line-up of beloved southern dishes is irresistible in itself, but she aims to inspire enthusiasm and confidence to expand deliciously from there. The beauty of her approach is that it reflects how people really do learn to cook, resourcefully, creatively, and joyfully. Savor the Classic Chicken and Dumplings and next find yourself cooking Vegetarian Mushroom Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings before whipping up Hungarian Chicken Paprikash with Dumplings.

Jennifer Brulé graduated from Baltimore International Culinary College and studied recipe development at the Culinary Institute of America. She is a nationally published food writer, recipe developer, and television chef.

PATRICK PHILLIPS
Friday, September 30, 7:00 p.m.
Patrick Phillips will join us at The Regulator Bookshop to discuss his new Blood at the Root book, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.  A gripping tale of racial cleansing in Forsyth County, Georgia, and a harrowing testament to the deep roots of racial violence in America, Blood at the Root is a sweeping American tale, spanning the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the hope and promise of Reconstruction, and the crushing injustice of Forsyth's racial cleansing. The story continues to the verge of our own era, including a violent attack on civil rights activists in 1987, as residents fought to "Keep Forsyth White" well into the 1990s. Patrick Phillips breaks the century-long silence of his hometown and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century.

Patrick Phillips is an award-winning poet, translator, and professor. A Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his most recent book, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry. Phillips lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Drew University.

RYAN MCKAIG
Tuesday, October 4, 7:00PM
Raleigh author Ryan McKaig will read from his new crime thriller, set in Durham,  Bull City Blues,

When a beautiful TV reporter is killed, her boyfriend, a middleweight boxing contender, is charged with the murder. He turns to John Egan, a former homicide detective and his father's old police partner, to save his life and clear his name. Egan, now living a quiet life with his loving girlfriend, soon finds himself surrounded by danger. His investigation leads him through the world of street criminals, a secret sadomasochistic underworld, a cartel boss, and a squad of rogue cops who spread violence and fear throughout the city. Pursuing his leads will place Egan in the crosshairs of a terrifying and elusive killer and place at risk his life and everything that he has ever loved.

Ryan McKaig was born in Raleigh and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill.  He worked as a newspaper reporter in Colorado, Idaho, and New York City, covering politics and Wall Street.  He returned to Raleigh to attend Campbell Law School and now works as a criminal defense and civil litigator.  He lives in Raleigh.
 
MANUEL ROSA
Friday, October 7 at 7:00PM
Manuel Rosa will read and sign his latest book, Columbus -- The Untold Story, a biography which unravels historical discrepancies surrounding Columbus and presents answers to the many reasonable questions that have never been explained. Columbus is truly an enigma with a much more complicated personal and professional life than history has told, including the high probability that he was of Polish royal blood.

Rosa has spent over a quarter century investigating America's legendary "discoverer" and his books have garnered International media attention and inspired dialogue amongst scholars, historians and educators. Now regarded as the world's foremost authority on Columbus, his own "voyage of discovery" began during the Columbus quincentennial, when his doubts were stirred by the supposed marriage of the lowly Italian peasant to a highborn Portuguese lady.  Rosa has essentially proven that Columbus served as a double-agent for the Portuguese crown, that the Santa Maria never sank, but, rather, was purposefully marooned and that Columbus' 1498 Last Will and Testament is a forgery.

Manuel Rosa is a Portuguese-American investigative historian. He has authored six foreign books on Columbus, has advised UNESCO and the Haitian government on matters related to Columbus' lost ship, the Santa Maria, and has appeared on BBC, NPR, the Travel Channel's "Expedition Unknown," and numerous foreign-language media.
 
ELISSA ALTMAN
Saturday, October 8 at 7:00PM
Washington Post columnist and James Beard Award-winning author Elissa Altman (Poor Man's Feast) discuss and sign her memoir, Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw
 
Elissa Altman's memoir explores tradition, religion, family expectation, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her 1970s Queens, NY, childhood. Every part of Altman's youth was laced with contradiction and hope, betrayal and the yearning for acceptance: synagogue on Saturday and Chinese pork ribs on Sunday, her old-country grandparents, whose kindness and love were tied to unspoken rage, and her bell-bottomed neighbors, whose adoring affection hid dark secrets. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1960s and '70s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities; it is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite of and in honor to your past.
 
Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking, and the James Beard Award-winning blog of the same name. She also writes the Washington Post column Feeding My Mother.  Altman writes full time from her home in Newtown, Connecticut where she lives with her spouse, book designer Susan Turner.
 
 
APS CAT ADOPTION EVENT
Sunday, October 9, 2016 2:00 pm
Durham Animal Protection Society will hold a monthly cat adoption event at the Regulator. Come visit our furry friends from 2:00 - 3:30. Note the time and date.
 
D.G. MARTIN
Monday, October 10 at 7:00PM
Join D.G. Martin for the launch of his new book, North Carolina's Roadside Eateries: A Traveler's Guide to Local Restaurants, Diners, and Barbecue Joints.  
 
Want to eat like the locals? D. G. Martin has spent years traveling the major D G Martin roadways of North Carolina, on the lookout for community, local history, and, of course, a good home-cooked meal. Here D. G. is your personal tour guide to more than 100 notable local roadway haunts that serve not only as places to eat but also as fixtures of their communities. You're going to want to keep a copy of this book in your glove compartment! 
 
David Grier "D. G." Martin, Jr. is a newspaper columnist and the current host of UNC-TV's North Carolina Bookwatch. Born in Atlanta, Martin grew up in Davidson, North Carolina, where his father served as president of Davidson College. He attended Davidson, where he played on the basketball team for Coach Lefty Driesell and then served in the U.S. Army's Special Forces. After active duty, Martin graduated from Yale Law School and practiced law in Charlotte, NC.Martin served as both the Secretary and a Vice-President for the University of North Carolina system, and served in interim leadership positions at North Carolina Central University, and UNC-Pembroke. In addition to writing a weekly column that appears in over 40 newspapers across North Carolina and hosting North Carolina Bookwatch on UNC-TV since 1999, Martin hosts a daily radio interview show on AM radio station WCHL in Chapel Hill. He is married, has two adult children, enjoys running and has completed several marathons.
 
TIM CROTHERS
Wednesday, October 12, 7:00 P.M.
Chapel Hill author Tim Crothers will be at The Regulator Bookshop for a reading and book signing of The Queen of Katwe: One Girl's Triumphant Queen of Katwe Path to Becoming a Chess Champion, the astonishing and inspirational true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess prodigy from the slums of Uganda, who -- inspired by an unlikely mentor-- has become an international chess champion. The highly praised* motion picture of The Queen of Katwe has just opened nationwide.
 
* "If there is anyone out there capable of remaining unmoved by this true-life triumph-of-the-underdog sports story, I don't think I want to meet that person..." A. O. Scott, The NYTimes.
 
"To be African is to be an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an underdog in Africa. To be from Katwe is to be an underdog in Uganda. And to be a girl is to be an underdog in Katwe. The Queen of Katwe is the ultimate underdog story."
 
Tim Crothers is a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated who is currently a journalism professor and a freelance sportswriter. He is the author of The Man Watching, a biography of Anson Dorrance, the legendary coach of the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, co-author of Hard Work, the autobiography of UNC basketball coach Roy Williams, and author of The Queen of Katwe, the story of a 16-year-old female chess champion from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Crothers lives with his wife and two children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
  
Shop Independent Durham
Tom Campbell
Regulator Bookshop
720 Ninth St.
Durham, NC 27705
(919) 286-2700
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Robert Olen Butler, William Ferris, and Colson Whitehead

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This week: Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler Wednesday night, William Ferris Thursday night
In a starred review, Booklist had this to say about Robert Olen Butler's new novel, Perfume River: "A deeply meditative reflection on aging and love, as seen through the prism of one family quietly torn asunder by the lingering effects of the Vietnam War. Butler, returning to contemporary literary fiction after three outstanding historical thrillers, shows again that he is a master of tone, mood, and character, whatever genre he chooses to explore. This is thoughtful, introspective fiction of the highest caliber, but it carries a definite edge, thanks to an insistent backbeat that generates suspense with the subtlest of brushstrokes."

And does William Ferris know some things about the South, or what?
With Judy Peiser he co-founded the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, Tennessee; he was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, and is co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Then next Thursday, September 22, Colson Whitehead comes to the Durham Armory with his incredible new novel, The Underground Railroad

"With this novel, Colson Whitehead proves that he belongs on any short list of America's greatest authors--his talent and range are beyond impressive and impossible to ignore. The Underground Railroad is an American masterpiece, as much a searing document of a cruel history as a uniquely brilliant work of fiction."
--Michael Schaub, NPR                       

See below for more on all of our events for the rest of the month.                                   
 Upcoming Events for the rest of September    

Wednesday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.
Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain) will be at The Regulator Bookshop to read and sign his book, Perfume River, an exquisite novel that examines family ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family.
 
Robert Quinlan's marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam War protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical. His brother, Jimmy, is estranged from their father, a veteran of World War II at the end of his life. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert meets at a restaurant and at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert but on his entire family. Perfume River is a lyrically emotional exploration of one family's drama that echoes the lives of many who are affected by the aftermath of war and how war resonates through the American experience.

Robert Olen Butler  is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of sixteen novels, including Good Scent From a Strange Mountain and A Small Hotel. He is also the author of six short-story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award for Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Thursday, September 15, 7:00 p.m.
Local author and educator William Ferris will join us for a discussion and signing of his new book, The South in Color: A Visual Journal. Since the moment William Ferris's parents gave their twelve-year-old son a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera for Christmas in 1954, Ferris passionately began to photograph his world. He has never stopped. The sixties and seventies were a particularly significant period for Ferris as he became a pathbreaking documentarian of the American South. This beautiful, provocative collection of one hundred of Ferris's photographs of the South, taken during this formative period, capture the power of his color photography. Tom Rankin, the Director of the Center for Documentary Studies, provides the foreword. Willaim Ferris
 
William Ferris is Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. With Ferris's two previous books, Give My Poor Heart Ease and The Storied South, The South in Color: A Visual Journal completes an informal trilogy of Ferris's documentation of the South's tumultuous twentieth century.

COLSON WHITEHEAD - At the Durham Armory
Thursday, September 22, 7:00 p.m.
Location: The Durham Armory, 220 Foster St., Durham, NC
Join us for a reading, discussion, and book signing at The Durham Armory with prize-winning and bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead and his new novel, The Underground Railroad.
This is a ticketed event. Two tickets come with each purchase of the book ($27.00), or tickets without a book are $10.00 each. Books and tickets may be purchased at the store, through our web site, or at the door. We strongly recommend pre-purchase of the book to avoid a long line at the event. (Pre-purchased books/tickets will have an express line at the Armory).  Admission tickets may be used also as credit toward a book purchase at the event. Please note the location.

Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad is a tour de force chronicling a young slave's journey as she makes a desperate bid for freedom from an antebellum cotton plantation in Georgia circa 1850. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share. The New York Times Book Review  named The Underground Railroad as one of the most anticipated books of 2016; it is also been chosen as a 2016 Oprah Book Club selection.  
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor-engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and cavernous tunnels, crisscrossing beneath American soil.  As Cora travels north, her journey transports her across state lines.  And along her way, each state he visits portrays a different "state" of American possibility, showcasing a kaleidoscope of communities across the country - from a white supremacist enclave in North Carolina to an Indiana black separatist encampment.
Though its central conceit may be imagined and its narrative not strictly historical, the hideous realities of slavery and institutionalized racism at its center are well grounded in documented facts. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.
Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and a collection of essays, The Collosus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

Friday, September 23, 7:00 p.m.
Brad Weiss will be at The Regulator Bookshop to discuss his newest book, Real Pigs: Shifting Values in the Field of Local Pork 

In Real Pigs Brad Weiss traces the desire for "authentic" local foods in the Piedmont region of central North Carolina as he follows farmers, butchers, and chefs through the process of breeding, raising, butchering, selling, and preparing pigs raised on pasture for consumption.

Drawing on his experience working on Piedmont pig farms and at farmers' markets, Weiss explores the history, values, social relations, and practices that drive the pasture-raised pork market. He shows how pigs in the Piedmont become imbued with notions of authenticity, illuminating the ways the region's residents understand local notions of place and culture. Full of anecdotes and interviews with the market's primary figures, Real Pigs reminds us that what we eat and why have implications that resonate throughout the wider social, cultural, and historical world.

Brad Weiss is Professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary and the author of The Making and Unmaking of the Haya Lived World: Consumption, Commoditization, and Everyday Practice, also published by Duke University Press, and Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania.

TIVKA WOLF
Saturday, September 24 at 7:00PM
Tivka Wolf will be at The Regulator Bookshop with her new book, Ask Me About Polyamory: The Best of Kimchi Cuddles -- a hilarious and touching comic about polyamory, queer, and genderqueer issues.                                 
If your relationships or your gender are unconventional, you'll find useful advice and plenty of laughs in this compilation of the wildly popular webcomic Kimchi Cuddles. Quirky, endearing and charmingly (and sometimes painfully) realistic characters, many based on real people, explore polyamory, queer and genderqueer issues. Covering practical matters like time management and serious topics like discrimination, this book unites the best of two years of Kimchi Cuddles comics, organized into a practical and entertaining guide to the real world of alternative relationships.                            
Tikva Wolf comes from a long line of love-activists and has been drawing ever since she could hold a crayon. What she primarily cares about in art (and life) is connecting to people, creating dialogue, and spreading awareness. She lives in North Carolina.
                
Monday, September 26, 7:00 p.m.
Thomas Mullen will read from his new novel, Darktown. The award-winning author of The Last Town on Earth delivers a riveting and elegant 1948-set thriller set in Atlanta that explores murder, corrupt police, and strained race relations that feels ripped from today's headlines.

Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers; they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters.

Set in the post-war, pre-civil rights South, and evoking the socially resonant and morally complex crime novels of Dennis Lehane and Walter Mosley, Darktown is a vivid, smart, intricately plotted crime saga that explores the timely issues of race, law enforcement, and the uneven scales of justice.

Thomas Mullen is the author of The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA TODAY. He was also awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction for The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers and The Revisionists. His Atlanta Magazine true crime story about a novelist/con man won the City and Regional Magazine Award for Best Feature. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.

 Thursday, September 29, 7:00 p.m.
Join TV chef Jennifer Brulé at The Regulator Bookshop for the launch of her new cookbook, Learn to Cook 25 Southern Classics 3 Ways. This event is free and open to the public. Tasty treats from the book will be on-hand to sample and cookbooks will be available for sale and signing by the author at the event.

Jennifer Brulé is on a mission, southern style, to teach people to cook. Her method: master 25 classic southern dishes, and then, make two variations, one contemporary and one inspired by international tastes. Brulé's line-up of beloved southern dishes is irresistible in itself, but she aims to inspire enthusiasm and confidence to expand deliciously from there. The beauty of her approach is that it reflects how people really do learn to cook, resourcefully, creatively, and joyfully. Savor the Classic Chicken and Dumplings and next find yourself cooking Vegetarian Mushroom Stew with Sweet Potato Dumplings before whipping up Hungarian Chicken Paprikash with Dumplings.

Jennifer Brulé graduated from Baltimore International Culinary College and studied recipe development at the Culinary Institute of America. She is a nationally published food writer, recipe developer, and television chef.

PATRICK PHILLIPS
Friday, September 30, 7:00 p.m.
Patrick Phillips will join us at The Regulator Bookshop to discuss his new Blood at the Root book, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.  A gripping tale of racial cleansing in Forsyth County, Georgia, and a harrowing testament to the deep roots of racial violence in America, Blood at the Root is a sweeping American tale, spanning the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the hope and promise of Reconstruction, and the crushing injustice of Forsyth's racial cleansing. The story continues to the verge of our own era, including a violent attack on civil rights activists in 1987, as residents fought to "Keep Forsyth White" well into the 1990s. Patrick Phillips breaks the century-long silence of his hometown and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century.

Patrick Phillips is an award-winning poet, translator, and professor. A Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his most recent book, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry. Phillips lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Drew University.
Shop Independent Durham
Tom Campbell
Regulator Bookshop
720 Ninth St.
Durham, NC 27705
(919) 286-2700
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/