Songbirds and Stray Dogs Reading Aug. 9

Songbirds and Stray Dogs featured at Route 1 Reads

Authors Meagan Lucas, Ron Rash Virtual Book Conversation Aug. 9 

Meagan Lucas

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 14, 2022) – North Carolina Humanities, home to the North Carolina Center for the Book, announced today that it is featuring Songbirds and Stray Dogs by Meagan Lucas in programming and resources throughout 2022 as part of its annual Route 1 Reads initiative. Songbirds and Stray Dogs is Meagan Lucas’ debut novel.

North Carolina Humanities invites you to attend a virtual book conversation with Meagan Lucas and fellow North Carolina-based author Ron Rash on August 9, 2022 at 6:30 pm. Meagan and Ron will spend an hour talking about Songbirds and Stray Dogs, their writing processes, and Appalachian literature. This event is free and is hosted on Zoom. Registration is required.

Ron Rash

Follow this link to register:https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aln_zw75T2msQTTpiPw7xw 

Bookmarks, an independent bookstore based in Winston-Salem, is helping to support this event by giving away four $20 gift cards to their online and in-store book catalogue. Everyone who attends the August 9 book conversation program will automatically be entered to win. Winner will be selected at random. Additional giveaway details are below.*

Route 1 Reads is a road trip-inspired reading list that annually explores various genres and features books that illuminate important aspects of each individual state or commonwealth for readers traveling this meandering highway. The 2022 theme of the reading list is literary fiction.

On her selection by North Carolina Humanities, Meagan Lucas expressed, “I am thrilled and honored for Songbirds and Stray Dogs to have been chosen as North Carolina’s Route 1 Reads book. North Carolina is my home and the inspiration for so much of my work.”

As a genre, literary fiction novels are typically defined as stories that emphasize character and theme over plot. Set on the coast of South Carolina, and the mountains of Western North Carolina, geography and sense of place are both central to Songbirds and Stray Dogs.

“I consider Songbirds and Stray Dogs a love song to North Carolina – to the beauty of its geography, and the tenacity and kindness of its people,” Lucas said. “It’s a great introduction to the genre, and perhaps the perfect road trip read. I can’t wait for readers to meet, journey with, and fall in love with Jolene, Chuck, and Cash.”

Meagan Lucas lives with her husband and children in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She teaches Creative Writing at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and edits Reckon Review. Meagan’s short work has been published or is forthcoming in journals like The Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, MonkeyBicycle, Cowboy Jamboree, BULL, Pithead Chapel, and others.

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

*Giveaway terms and eligibility requirements: Everyone who attends the August 9 book conversation program, “North Carolina Humanities’ 2022 Route 1 Reads Conversation: Songbirds and Stray Dogs.” will automatically be entered to win one $20 gift card from Bookmarks. Winner chosen at random on August 10 by North Carolina Humanities. Winner will be contacted by email for name and mailing address. An email is required as part of registering for the event. Winner must respond within 30 days to claim prize. Winner will receive one $20 gift card to Bookmarks and one NC Humanities bookmark and pen. By entering, you confirm you are 18+ years of age.

Press Contact: Melanie Moore Richeson, North Carolina Humanities (North Carolina Center for the Book),  704-687-1520,  mmoore@nchumanities.org

About North Carolina Humanities: North Carolina Humanities is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through public humanities programs and grantmaking, North Carolina Humanities connects North Carolinians with cultural experiences that spur dialogue, deepen human connections, and inspire community. The North Carolina Center for the Book is a collection of North Carolina Humanities’ reading and literature programs that celebrate the importance of books, reading, libraries, and North Carolina’s literary heritage. Route 1 Reads is a program of the North Carolina Center for the Book and is provided by North Carolina Humanities. To learn more, visit www.nchumanities.org.

About the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress: The Library’s Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading, is a national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners, and through its Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit www.read.gov.

Literary Hour at JCCFS - last one this year

Read about last evening's reading at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
Click this:   https://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/2019/11/literary-hour-finale-for-2019-starred.html#.XdgrAJNKiM8

Here is a photo.

Linda Jones, Janice Moore, Meagan Lucas

Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore to read at The Literary Hour at JCCFS, Brasstown, NC, on Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM

On Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and NC Writers' Network-West (NCWN-West) will sponsor The Literary Hour, where NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House’s Community Room on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is typically held on the third Thursday of the month, is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore.

Linda Grayson Jones, a poetry devotee since childhood, has a B.S. in Biology from

Stetson University, an M.A. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Pathology from Vanderbilt University. In 2009, she returned to her first love—teaching.

Jones is currently an Associate Professor of Biology and Dean of Math and Science at Young Harris College. She remains a reader and writer of poetry. 

Janice Moore is an Associate Professor Emerita of English at Young Harris College.  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.  

Moore's chapbook, Teaching the Robins, was published by Finishing Line Press. Among the anthologies that include her poems are The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and three volumes of: The Southern Poetry Anthology: Contemporary Appalachia, Georgia, and North Carolina, from Texas Review Press.  

Moore is coordinator of the NCWN-West’s poetry critique group and is on the poetry editorial board of The Pharos, publication of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Meagan Lucas teaches English at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and is the Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine. Meagan has a BA in History from Wilfrid Laurier University, an M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from Ferris State University, and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University.

Meagan’s stories have been published in a variety of journals including: Four Ties Literary Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Same Literary Journal, The New Southern Fugitives, Barren Magazine and Still: The Journal. Lucas  won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction, was the runner up in the 2017 SNHU Fall Fiction Competition, and a Judge’s Choice finalist in the 2018 Still: The Journal Fiction competition. Her story “Voluntary Action” was nominated by Still: The Journal for a 2019 Pushcart Prize.

Her first novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in August 2019.

For more information on this event, contact Mary Ricketson at:

 maryricketson311@hotmail.com

 

Meagan Lucas is nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize for her short story, "Voluntary Action."

Congratulations to NCWN-West member, Meagan Lucas, who has been nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize, a prestigious American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in small presses over the previous year. Click on the link to go to http://www.stilljournal.net/ and read Meagan's nominated short story, "Voluntary Action."  

 

A Canadian who found home in Western NC, Meagan lives in Hendersonville with her husband and their two small children. Meagan writes literary fiction and teaches composition at AB Tech. 

Her work can be found in a variety of literary journals including:The Santa Fe Writers Project, The Penmen Review, The New Southern Fugitives, Embark Literary Journal, Attic Door Press and Barren Magazine. Her story “Kittens” is the 2017 Winner of the Scythe Prize for Fiction. Family life, the grey space between right and wrong, and the dark underbelly of the American Dream figure prominently in her work. 

You can read more at: www.meaganlucas.com  She tweets grudgingly @mgnlcs. When she's not writing or teaching, she likes to bake and haunt bookstores.