Join Lauren Harr, co-founder of Gold Leaf Literary Services, to ask burning questions about the book world, author events, and the business of writing.

This event is scheduled to occur monthly at the dates and times listed above.

To join, email [email protected] with the subject “I have a question!” and you’ll receive the Zoom link for the upcoming event.

Founded by two long-time booksellers in 2016, Gold Leaf Literary Services is dedicated to educating and assisting authors in various stages of their careers. For more, visit www.goldleafliterary.com.

This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online.

The event is free but 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 would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.

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!

Idiot Men provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. These tales recalibrate morality and convention as readers will grow to love the characters despite—and perhaps because of—their flaws. These diverse, rich stories are ultimately connected by the spellbinding voice of a true Southern storyteller.

You’ll meet a truck driver whose wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, Princess Di; a male nurse who discovers a trailer full of counterfeit NASCAR paraphernalia during a home health visit; an amateur arsonist sentenced to a year in a Smokey the Bear suit; a disgruntled roofer with a bad back and a meth-dealing twin brother…these are just a few of the idiot men you’ll encounter in a collection of stories that will appeal to readers who relish literature with a Southern flavor.

Scott Gould was born, raised and still lives in South Carolina. His first book, Strangers to Temptation—a linked story collection the Atlanta Journal Constitution called “a compulsive read” and Foreword Reviews dubbed “funny, often poignant, and not easily forgotten”—was published by Hub City Press in 2017. Of his debut novel, Whereabouts (Koehler Books), the Atlanta Journal Constitution said, the book is “distinctly Southern but gritty, without a whiff of moonlight and magnolias.” Gould’s memoir, Things That Crash, Things That Fly (Vine Leaves Press), was released in March of 2021, and a second novel, The Hammerhead Chronicles, was published by the University of North Georgia Press in early 2022. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Kenyon Review, New Stories from the South, Black Warrior Review, Carolina Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Garden & Gun, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse and The Bitter Southerner, among others. He is a two-time winner of the S.C. Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Prose and the S.C. Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina with a cat and a dog, and teaches creative writing at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities. He is always pulling for the Braves.

Sebastian Matthews is the author of the memoir In My Father’s Footsteps (W.W. Norton & Co.) as well as two collections of poetry, We Generous and Miracle Day, both published by Red Hen Press. A third collection, Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision, came out from Red Hen Press in 2017. Along with Stanley Plumly, Matthews is the co-editor of three volumes: The Poetry Blues: Essays and Interviews of William Matthews (University of Michigan Press), Search Party: The Collected Poems of William Matthews (Houghton Mifflin), a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, and New Hope for the Dead: Uncollected Matthews (Red Hen Press). His poetry and prose have appeared in or on, among others, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Blackbird, The Common, From the Fishouse, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Poets & Writers, storySouth, The Sun, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Writer’s Almanac, and Writer’s Chronicle.

This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online.

The event is free but 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 would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.

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!

Old Crimes delves into the lives of characters who hold their secrets and misdeeds close, even as the past continues to reverberate over time and across generations. And despite the characters’ yearnings for connection, they can’t seem to tell the whole truth. In “Low Tones,” a woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband’s commentary. In “Lineman,” a telephone lineman strains to connect to his family even as he feels pushed aside in a digital world. In “Confessional,” a young couple buys a confessional booth for fun, only to discover the cost of honesty.

Profoundly moving and unforgettable, for fans of Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Lily King, the stories in Old Crimes reveal why McCorkle has long been considered a master of the form, probing lives full of great intensity, longing and affection, and deep regret.

Jill McCorkle has the distinction of having published her first two novels on the same day in 1984.  Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said: “one suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist.  With July 7th, she is also a full grown one.” Since then she has published five other novels—most recently, Hieroglyphics—and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories.  McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Prize; she was recently inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. McCorkle has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and NC State where she remains affiliated with the MFA Program in creative writing and she is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars.