Calendar of Events

Join authors Constance Lombardo and Shannon Hitchcock to celebrate the launch of Tiny Spoon vs. Little Fork and Story Quilts: Appalachian Women Speak. 

This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance. 

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.

This event includes a book signing. If you are not attending in person you may request signed books by using the order comments field when you order below. For personalization include the name of the person to whom the book should be signed, e.g. “To Marisol.”

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Tiny Spoon vs. Little Fork

Two mortal enemies set aside their animosity for the sake of a common cause in this WWE-mimicking kitchen smackdown. When a kitchen clock announces “Time for breakfast!!!” Tiny Spoon, a yellow implement, and purple Little Fork jump out of their respective drawers, determined to win the heart, mind, and, most importantly, mouth of an energetic infant. Dialogue balloon text by Lombardo (Everybody Says Meow) is comically high-strung: “I’ve always fed the baby,” says Spoon. “She loves to SIP! And SAVOR! And SLURP!” But Fork insists “now Baby wants to BITE! And CHOMP!” Dynamic paneled cartoons in nursery hues by creative team Dan & Jason (the Blue, Barry & Pancakes series) reach a fever pitch when pj-sporting Baby, who’s portrayed with light brown skin and saucer eyes, toddles onto the scene, addressing the battling cutlery with equal enthusiasm as “Spood” and “Frok,” and then gleefully hurtling them (and a much bedraggled pink stuffed rabbit) clear across the kitchen. But in this high-energy conflict turned collaboration, the duo make their way back to the table and prove they’re a mighty mealtime force. “I got the oatmeal!” says Spoon, while Fork chimes in “Scrambled eggs! I’m on it!”

Story Quilts: Appalachian Women Speak

History books have forgotten most Appalachian women, many of whom were poor or lacked formal education. Yet these women spoke through the quilts they created from scraps of cloth collected over time. Piece by piece, these patchwork quilts revealed the beauty of mountain life.

Constance Lombardo is the author/illustrator of 4 books, including the 3 books in the Mr. Puffball series and the picture book, Everybody Says Meow, which was a 2020 Anna Dewdney Read Together Award Honor Book. Her passion for classic movies and classic comedy shines through in her work. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Shannon Hitchcock was born in North Carolina and grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Along with N.H. Senzai, she is a co-author of the middle-grade novel Flying Over Water. In addition, Shannon has written three other middle grades, One True Way, Ruby Lee & Me, and The Ballad of Jessie Pearl. Her books have been featured on many state awards lists and have received acclaimed reviews. Shannon and illustrator Sophie Page previously teamed up for the picture book biography, Saving Granddaddy’s Stories–Ray Hicks the Voice of Appalachia. She Sang for the Mountains is their second collaboration.

The Foodie Book Club is a club about food writing. The club meets on the last Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM.  Click here for details and monthly picks!

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Off The Yoga Mat follows three characters approaching 40 on a rollicking journey of love, transformation, and jealousy as Y2K approaches. Nate, a graduate student researching jealousy in Darwin and Shakespeare, denies he ever experiences that emotion. In shielding himself from disappointment, he almost misses out on a scintillating romance. After she breaks up with Nate, Nora, fueled by the desire to have a baby, takes a temporary job at Nokia in Finland. She sweats in the sauna, tries on men like miniskirts, and embraces the Finnish concept of sisu: perseverance despite setbacks.

Nate’s yoga teacher, Lulu, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse. An experiment concocted by Nate’s friends to test his ability to withstand jealousy pushes him into a steamy tryst with Lulu. While she aids her ailing mother in New Orleans, Lulu meets a woman who helps her confront her violent past. After they become lovers, Nate (jealous this time) reconnects with Nora at a wedding. Their boozy nostalgic reunion complicates everything.

Cheryl J. Fish is a poet, fiction writer and environmental humanities scholar. Her recent books of poetry include Crater & Tower, on trauma and ecology after the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption and the terrorist attack of 9/11/01, and The Sauna Is Full Of Maids, poems and photographs celebrating Finnish sauna culture, the natural world, and friendships. She has been a Fulbright Professor and she teaches at City University of New York.

Christy Alexander Hallberg is the author of the award-winning novel Searching for Jimmy Page (Livingston Press, 2021) and host of Rock is Lit: A Podcast About Rock Novels, from Pantheon Podcast Network. She is a Teaching Professor of English at East Carolina University, where she earned her BS and MA in English. She received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Goddard College. She is Senior Associate Editor of North Carolina Literary Review. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as North Carolina Literary Review, The Main Street Rag, Fiction Southeast, Riggwelter, Deep South Magazine, Eclectica, Litro, STORGY, Entropy, storySouth, Still: The Journal, and Concho River Review. Her creative nonfiction essay “The Ballad of Evermore” was a finalist for the Sequestrum 2020 Editor’s Reprint Award. Her flash story “Aperture” was chosen Story of the Month by Fiction Southeast for October 2020. The editors of the Best Small Fictions anthology series chose it for inclusion in their 2021 issue. Find her at www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/ and on Twitter/Instagram @ChristyHallberg.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Join Dahlia Lithwick, author of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America and novelist and scholar Siri Hustvedt. This event is hosted by Books and Books, Writers for Democratic Action and Book the Vote.

After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done?
Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren’t going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020. These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. And as the country confronts the news that the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, will soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Lithwick shines a light on not only the major consequences of such a decision, but issues a clarion call to all who might, like the women in this book, feel the urgency to join the fight. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans.

Dahlia Lithwick is the senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law.  Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2018.

Siri Hustvedt is a novelist and scholar, has a PhD in English literature, and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. She is the author of a book of poems, seven novels, four collections of essays, and two works of nonfiction, most recently, Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays (Simon & Schuster, 2022). She has published papers in various academic and scientific journals and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the European Charles Veillon Essay Prize, an American Academy of the Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction for The Blazing World, which was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.