The Bull’s Head Bookshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will present five free public readings and signings in four days next week.
The Bull’s Head Bookshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will present five free public readings and signings in four days next week.
At 3:30 p.m. Oct. 25, Jonathan Boyarin, Ph.D., will read from his new book, “Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side.”
In the book, Boyarin, the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at UNC, describes one of the last remaining Jewish congregations on New York’s Lower East Side, a historic neighborhood facing the challenges of gentrification.
At 3:30 p.m. Oct. 26, members of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective will share from poems, essays and other contributions to “Aforebo: A Harvest of North Carolina Writers of African Descent,” a double issue of the literary journal OBSIDIAN: Literature in the African Diaspora.
Based in Raleigh, the collective includes writers, dramatists, photographers, teachers and others who meet monthly to critique each other’s work and read and discuss books by African-American authors.
In the first of two programs on Oct. 27, UNC alumnus Robert Morgan, the Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University, will read from his new book “Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion,” at 1 p.m.
His tale unfolds in the stories of Thomas Jefferson and nine other prominent Americans: Andrew Jackson, John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman, David Crockett, Sam Houston, UNC alumnus James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, Kit Carson, Nicholas Trist and John Quincy Adams.
Morgan also depicts the nameless pioneers who risked their lives to settle on the frontier, displacing thousands of Native Americans. “Lions of the West” includes illustrations, portraits, maps, battle plans, appendices, notes and time lines.
He also writes poetry and fiction. His 2000 novel “Gap Creek” received the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was the Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year and designated as a Notable Book by The New York Times. Morgan has received an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010.
UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History will join the Bull’s Head in sponsoring the second reading on Oct. 27, at 3:30 p.m. at the Bull’s Head. Mark Auslander will discuss his new book, “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family.”
Auslander, an associate professor of anthropology and museum studies at Central Washington University, will be joined by Timothy McMillan, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in UNC’s African and Afro-American studies department.
The book concerns stories circulated for more than 150 years among residents of Oxford, Ga., the birthplace of Emory University. The tales recount experiences of an enslaved woman known as Kitty and her owner, prominent Methodist Bishop James Osgood Andrew, the first president of Emory’s board of trustees. “The Accidental Slaveowner” explores the ways different communities understood the status of Kitty.
On Oct. 28 at 1 p.m., music producer and singer-songwriter Butch Walker will share from his new book “Drinking With Strangers: Music Lessons From a Teenage Bullet Belt” (William Morrow). He will also play guitar and sing.
Rolling Stone’s Producer of the Year in 2005, Walker has worked with Weezer, Katy Perry, Hot Hot Heat, The Donnas and more.
His behind-the-scenes rock ’n’ roll memoir covers his Georgia roots, moving to Los Angeles at the age of 17 and working with top pop stars. He frankly describes the delicate balance between success, selling out, knocking back another shot of whiskey and the greed, drugs, swindles and unfulfilled promises he’s faced along the way.
The Bull’s Head is inside the UNC Student Stores off South Road near Wilson Library.
For more information on Bull’s Head events, call the shop at (919) 962-5060 or visit its Facebook events page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bulls-Head-Bookshop/14802079126?sk=events. For more on the Auslander program, call the Stone Center at (919) 962-9001 or visit http://sonjahaynesstonectr.unc.edu/.
Stone Center contact: Clarissa Goodlett, (919) 962- 0395, cgoodlet@email.unc.edu
Bull’s Head Bookshop contact: Kyle McKay, (919) 962-3450, mckay@unc.edu