Greensboro Public Library’s Book Lovers’ Social

February is National Library Lover’s Month. You are invited to the Greensboro Public Library’s thirteenth annual celebration of books and reading! Meet your fellow book lovers. We will welcome three North Carolina authors for an engaging conversation about books, libraries, reading and book clubs:

Jason Mott: A 2021 National Book Award winner, Hell Of A Book is a story that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole. In Mott’s new novel, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. But it also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. Throughout, these characters’ stories build and their stories converge. It is about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, and the always tragic story of a police shooting playing out repeatedly on the news. Mott is the author of four novels. The Returned, Jason’s debut novel, was adapted by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B.

Julia Ridley Smith: When Greensboro author Julia Ridley Smith’s parents died, they left behind an antique shop and home filled with furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Smith and her brother were faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents’ possessions? Her memoir, The Sum of Trifles, peels back the layers of meaning surrounding specific objects her parents owned, from an eighteenth-century miniature to her father’s prosthetics. A Japanese screen embodies her mother’s principles of good taste and good manners, while an antebellum quilt prompts Smith to grapple with her family’s slaveholding legacy. Along the way, she turns to literature that illuminates how her inheritance shaped her notions of identity and purpose.

Jill McCorkle: McCorkle’s latest novel, Hieroglyphics, reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you. In this masterful novel, McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father, a mother, or a child piecing together the world around us. A perennial book club favorite and masterful storyteller, McCorkle has published seven novels and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, The Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

This program can be viewed three ways:

1. It will be live with socially distanced limited seating at the Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue. To register, email Beth Sheffield by Friday, February 11.
2. The program will be available on Zoom. Register in advance at this link.
3. The program will also be streamed on the Library’s Facebook Page.