Bonnie E. Cone Professor in Civic Engagement Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

AUTHOR

Mark West

A Chance to Help Promising Pages Provide Children with Books

February 15, 2025 by Mark West

I recently received an email message from Anna Graham, one of my former graduate students. During her time at UNC Charlotte, Anna regularly volunteered with Promising Pages, a local nonprofit organization that provides area children with books of their own. Shortly after graduating with an M.A. in English in May 2024, Anna joined Promising Pages as their new Community Engagement Coordinator. I talked with her on the phone right after she accepted the position, and she was ecstatic that this role would enable her to share her love of reading and the magic of books with children in our Charlotte community who might otherwise not have access to books. That conversation took place several months ago, and I wondered what she had been up to since then. Well, in her email, she expressed how much she loved her new job, and she told me a little about her involvement with a fundraising event that she hoped I might help promote. I told her I would be happy to help, and I asked her for more information about her work with Promising Pages and their upcoming fundraising event. Here is what she sent to me:

As a child, I was lucky that I lived in a household with constant access to books. My mother shared her love of reading with me and had the resources to ensure I had a large home library of all my favorite titles. I genuinely believe that my access to books shaped me into the person I am today and prepared me for my future. I’m sure that many fellow book lovers can attest to similar stories – that their home libraries enabled their initial love of reading. However, home libraries are often seen as a luxury for under-resourced children and families in our community. All children need books in their homes to grow academically, and in turn succeed in life, but there are an estimated 60,000 children in the Charlotte area living in a book desert. The local nonprofit that I work for, Promising Pages: The Charlotte Area Book Bank, collects new and donated books and distributes them to students and organizations, with the goal of eliminating the book desert and providing a free resource to those who need it most.

To those who love books, like me, it was particularly upsetting to learn just how widespread the shortage of access to books is for so many people in our community. My work at Promising Pages addresses this by distributing books through a variety of programs, including our largest, Books on Break, which provides Title I schools with FREE book fairs for PreK-5th grade students. Each student chooses 5 free books to read over the summer, which helps students maintain their reading levels and sets them up for academic success in the following school year. 22 schools – 68,000+ books, 12,000+ students. Our goal is to provide free book fairs to all 64 title I schools in CMS. Some other plans of ours include expanding resources for our early childhood & healthcare partners and reaching our 2 million books distributed milestone!

Just like any nonprofit, Promising Pages relies on the generosity of supportive community members to fund our efforts. Everyone at Promising Pages acknowledges this, and that’s why we created our upcoming fundraiser, Novels & Nightcaps, as a “Bookfair for Grown-Ups” that celebrates our book-loving supporters. Bringing together locally owned bookstores, Novels & Nightcaps is a community event for attendees to shop, listen to comedy adult read-alouds, and visit our book-themed selfie booth. This year’s Novels & Nightcaps has a brand-new theme, “Flights of Fancy,” capturing the way books can whisk us away to fantastical worlds. Novels & Nightcaps takes place on Thursday, February 27th from 6 pm to 9 pm at The Union @ Station West: 919 Berryhill Rd suite 105, Charlotte, NC 28208. All ticket proceeds go directly to Promising Pages to support our efforts to increase literacy and eliminate barriers to book access for children in our Charlotte community. (Attendees must be 21+). The event has been a ton of fun to plan, and I hope to see you all there! For more information about this event, please click on the following link: https://promising-pages.org/novels-and-nightcaps/

I thank Anna for sending me this information, and I commend everyone associated with Promising Pages for providing so many Charlotte children with their own books. In so doing, Promising Pages is making an important contribution to countless children’s lives and to the continued vitality of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Promising Pages

Telling the Story of Women’s Basketball

February 09, 2025 by Mark West

Charlotte fans of women’s basketball might remember the Charlotte Sting, which was one of the original eight teams associated with the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Established in 1997 as a sister team to the Charlotte Hornets, the Charlotte Sting competed until 2007 when the team was dissolved. There are, however, recent news accounts that the team might be revived: https://www.wbtw.com/sports/we-need-this-charlotte-sting-could-return-to-wnba/

I saw the Charlotte Sting play on several occasions, and I remember being impressed with how the players supported each other and worked together as a cohesive team. They all did their part to make the WNBA a viable professional sports organization. I am not an obsessive sports fan, but I enjoyed rooting for the Charlotte Sting in part because they seemed to be having so much fun on the court.

I flashed back on the experience of going to Charlotte Sting games when I learned that the University of North Carolina Press will soon release the revised and expanded edition of Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball by Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford, both of whom are Charlotte writers. The official publication date is February 18, 2025. As they did in their original 2005 edition of the book, Pamela and Susan capture that special spirit—almost magic—that shapes the history of women’s basketball.

I contacted Pamela and Susan and asked them for more information about the revised edition of Shattering the Glass. Here is what they sent to me:

The expanded edition of Shattering the Glass is almost here!

The first edition, published by the New Press in 2005, was the most comprehensive account of American women’s basketball ever written. It became an integral part of sports history classes across the country. Readers raved.

Bust Magazine termed it “an indispensable resource.” Renowned sportswriter Robert Lipsyte described it as a “nonstop romp through hoops history” that offered “not only lively storytelling but a fascinating window on race, gender, and class on and off the court.” Historian Jacquelyn Hall called it a “sweeping, century-long story that places women’s sports at the heart of the fight for women’s rights.”

Twenty years later, the sport we’ve always loved has taken on new significance. Throughout its history, basketball has made it possible for players and coaches to challenge the limitations imposed on women by American culture and society. Our new chapters explore the factors that have contributed to the game’s recent growth, and the ways that players have used their new visibility to engage issues that include race, sexuality and opportunity. It’s such an important story—and it resonates more than ever today.

‘We’ve been so excited to watch the profile of women’s sports rise,” star player and four-time WNBA champion Seimone Augustus observed. “Doors are opening. People are able to see us; they’re able to hear us. We’re about to move light years ahead. We need to bring our history with us.”

We’ve been so excited to watch the profile of women’s sports rise. It’s been a privilege to be able to update our manuscript, and to explore the ways the history we’ve chronicled relates to an ever-changing present. Everlasting thanks to Mark Simpson-Vos and other supporters at UNC Press, who saw the potential in an updated/expanded edition and who have been great to work with.

For more information about the new edition, please click on the following links: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469674780/shattering-the-glass/ and shatteringtheglassbook.com.

Pamela and Susan will be at Park Road Books on February 19, signing copies of Shattering the Glass from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Also, they will be on Charlotte Talks on February 17.

I congratulate Pamela and Susan on their latest collaborative endeavor. Pamela and Susan live across the street from each other in Plaza Midwood, and they enjoy working together. They’ve also pursued plenty of their own projects in the past two decades, including Susan’s history of women’s basketball at Army West Point, and Pamela’s account of segregation, desegregation and resegregation at historically Black West Charlotte High School. All of us in Storied Charlotte are fortunate that Pamela and Susan enjoy writing together.

Tags: Women's Basketball

Aaron Gwyn’s Latest Story Set in the American West

February 01, 2025 by Mark West

Aaron Gwyn currently teaches creative writing and contemporary American literature in the English Department at UNC Charlotte, but his identity as a writer was forged in the American West. He grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma. His experiences on the ranch naturally led him to take an interest in the history of the American frontier.

Aaron’s familiarity with the history and landscape of the American Southwest is reflected in many of his stories. In 2020, for example, he published a novel titled All God’s Children: A Novel of the American West. Set largely in Texas between 1827 and 1847, All God’s Children braids together the stories of three characters who are drawn to the Texas frontier where they form a complex relationship. Their lives are shaped by the transformation of Texas from a province of Mexico to an independent republic to becoming the 28^th state in 1845.

Aaron returns to the Texas frontier in his latest story, a novella titled The Cannibal Owl. Loosely based on the childhood of a historical figure named Levi English, The Cannibal Owl tells the story of boy who runs away from an abusive home situation. In his wanderings, “he stumbled onto a band of Comanche out on the broken plains.” What follows is a stressful encounter, but eventually the Comanche decide to take him in.

In describing this novella, the publisher, Belle Point Press, discusses how the theme of belonging figures in The Cannibal Owl:

Drifting through the broken plains of 1820s Texas, Aaron Gwyn’s latest venture into the American frontier tells a riveting coming-of-age story. Inspired by the real-life figure Levi English, a settler who ran away to live with the Comanche (Nermernuh) People as a young boy, The Cannibal Owl follows his journey of not quite belonging within a community that is nevertheless kinder to him than his own family. When Levi is eventually forced to confront growing tensions among the tribal leaders, he must make difficult choices about loyalty and self-preservation amidst deep grief and unrelenting violence. A novella of cinematic prose steeped in Native culture, Levi’s story evokes reflections on the complexities of identity against a stunning Southern Plains landscape.

For readers who want to know more about The Cannibal Owl, please click on the following link: https://bellepointpress.com/products/the-cannibal-owl

I congratulate Arron on the publication The Cannibal Owl. As the publication of this novella demonstrates, Storied Charlotte extends far and wide, and there is plenty of room for the story of a boy growing up on the Texas frontier.

Tags: American West

Irene Blair Honeycutt’s New Poetry Collection

January 25, 2025 by Mark West

Irene Blair Honeycutt has played a major role in Charlotte’s literary circles for many years. During her tenure as a faculty member at Central Piedmont Community College, she taught creative writing to countless students. In 1993, she founded CPCC’s Spring Literary Festival and served as its director for fourteen years. This festival expanded into CPCC’s Sensoria Festival, a celebration of literature and the arts. Upon her retirement in 2006, CPCC established the Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lectureship in her honor.

Besides teaching and doing community engagement work, Irene has a long record as a published poet. Her first poetry collection, It Comes as a Dark Surprise, appeared in 2001. She then brought out Waiting for the Trout to Speak (2002), Before the Light Changes (2008), and Beneath the Bamboo Sky (2017). Her fifth and most recent poetry collection, Mountains of the Moon: Poems & Pieces, came out last month from Charlotte Lit Press. I contacted Irene and asked her for more information about her new poetry collection. Irene responded by sending me a reflective piece that she titled “Thoughts on Writing Mountains of the Moon.”

Poetry surprises us with its unexpectedness. We have a dream that haunts itself into becoming a poem. We honor a deceased friend. Our words keep the departed alive. Then we turn the page. Write a poem to honor a living person who has graced our lives in a special way. We write of moments that are already past. This moment is already past tense. One day, we receive a call that stops the clocks: that person we wrote about not long ago has died unexpectedly in his pickup truck. Frozen in the mountains. But unexpectedness is about more than the dying. Or the leaving.

As Annie Dillard says, “We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.” The heron’s wings opening to the Book of Ages. A melody pulsing beneath Serkin’s fingers and all those trout swimming. The moths. The moon. The echolocation. The orientation of stars.

A poem at a glance is like the tip of an iceberg. What is easily discernible remains on the surface. What lies beneath the layers of a poem ventures into the deep unknown. To scramble the metaphor for a moment, I said to my dentist not long ago, not thinking of poetry, but of a possible root canal: A lot of life has gone into that tooth!

The same is true of Mountains of the Moon. All the life that went into this book contains years of being taught by incredible teachers of literature that go all the way back to elementary school. It contains days of childhood when I sat inside my bamboo hut nurtured by nature and wrote tiny poems and hid them in the ground. Biblical stories and hymns—rich imagery was part of that childhood. In my professional life in Charlotte, opportunities to hear amazing poets came my way via CPCC’s Sensoria, including Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, Linda Pastan, Edward Hirsch, Mark Doty, Natasha Tretheway, Li Young-Lee, and Stephen Dunn. Too many to name. And marvelous years of mentoring students from whom I also learned came my way. The Charlotte Writers Club provided a welcoming place for leadership roles and fellowship for beginning and experienced writers.

We live in intervals. Each poem is never at the same place in the river of Time. Mountains of the Moon, my fifth, is a hybrid collection of Haibun, mini essays, dramatic, informal and experimental forms. Two of the poems were published in 2011 and 2012. The most recent in 2024. Sections vary: Motifs highlight living during the pandemic, relying on the human and the nonhuman for inspiration, joying in playing with language in new ways, mourning the loss of my dog. And the saving moon from childhood is a constant influence. I aimed to capture the unexpected, to allow intuition to lead. And then I learned anew how the poem, if we trust it, becomes wiser than the poet.

Poetry gives the breath of life to memory. I’m not the first to say that elegiac poetry is a celebration of life, not death. And I love that T. S. Eliot said “…every poem [is] an epitaph.”

I am grateful to Charlotte Lit, to all nonprofit independent presses, to the Charlotte Writers Club and Storied Charlotte for celebrating and preserving poetry for the good of us all.

For more about Mountains of the Moon, read Irene’s book page at https://www.charlottelit.org/press/mountains-of-the-moon Charlotte Lit is sponsoring a launch party for Mountains of the Moon. This event will take place on Sunday, February 16, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. at Charlotte Hygge Coworking, 933 Louise Avenue. Copies of Irene’s collection will be available at the event to buy and have signed, but you can also purchase it online from Charlotte Lit Press. The event is free, but seating is limited so please register here.

I congratulate Irene on the publication of Mountains of the Moon, and I thank her for her many contributions to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: poetry collection

Celebrating Our Freedom to Read

January 18, 2025 by Mark West

When Hurricane Helene swept through North Carolina this past September, Charlotte did not take a direct hit. However, the heavy rain and high wind forced the cancellation of many events in Charlotte including a much-anticipated Freedom to Read Panel Discussion organized by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. The organizers intended for this panel discussion to coincide with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, but book banning is not limited to one week—it’s a year-around problem. For this reason, the organizers decided to reschedule the panel discussion even though Banned Books Week has already come and gone. The rescheduled Freedom to Read Panel Discussion will take place on Thursday, February 6, 2025, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the SouthPark Regional Library (7015 Carnegie Boulevard).

I contacted Meghan Anderson, one of the organizers of the event, and asked her for more information. Here is what she sent to me:

Attempts to ban books from school and public libraries are rising at an unprecedented level across the country. Join the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library as we celebrate our freedom to read with an exceptional in-person panel of experts who will engage in open conversation about the dangers of book banning and censorship and the importance of free expression and first amendment rights.

The panel consists experts with varying perspectives. Providing the author point of view is Tameka Fryer Brown. She is a picture book author whose books prominently feature inclusivity. Providing the reader perspective is David Caldwell, an active member of the Park Road Books Banned Books Club. We round out the panel with two different librarian perspectives, Abby Moore, an education librarian at UNC Charlotte, and Megan Sanford, a CMS Media Coordinator. They both will provide us community and school perspectives of the current censorship landscape. And of course, Marcellus Turner, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s own CEO, will emcee the event and provide his public library point of view as well.

The goal of the event is to provide a space to learn about the dangers of censorship and book challenges as well as provide information on the current climate. Each panelist will have a chance to speak and then a question and answer session for further discussion will occur. All people curious about this topic are encouraged to attend!

The event will take place at South Park Regional branch at 6:00 pm on Thursday, February 6th, 2025. Light refreshments will be served. The event is free, but registration is required. The registration link for the event is here.

My thanks go to Meghan, the panelists, and everyone involved in making this event a reality despite the problems caused by Hurricane Helene. I urge everyone in Storied Charlotte to join the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in celebrating and exercising our precious freedom to read.

Tags: Book Banning

Chris Arvidson on Becoming a Poet

January 11, 2025 by Mark West

The world of creative writing can be divided into three broad categories: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. When I first met Chris Arvidson about six years ago, she was known primarily as a writer of creative nonfiction. She wrote personal essays about such topics as her love of the North Carolina mountains and her passion for baseball. Recently, however, Chris has taken an interest in writing poetry. In 2022, she published her debut poetry chapbook titled The House Inside My Head. This month Finishing Line Press brought out Nobody Cares What You Think, her first full poetry collection. Curious about how and why Chris made the transition from creative nonfiction to poetry, I reached out to her and asked about this development in her writing career. Here is what she sent to me:

Poetry is a relatively new genre for me. I have often tried to figure out how this MFA in Creative Nonfiction person ended up wandering into poetry. I think I have a couple of ideas about how that has happened. When I moved back to Charlotte in 2019, I started attending a weekly prompt-driven workshop at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Uptown branch. And, somehow, I started responding in poetry? It just started pouring out of me. I have kept a running notebook ever since, using it as a master collector of writing from every workshop I attend, which includes many with Charlotte Lit (where I now serve on the Board), Charlotte Writers Club, and Table Rock Writers Workshop at Wildacres, as well as the library. I especially find Jay Ward’s monthly Saturday series at University City Library a fun and always productive couple of writing hours.

I suspect the appeal of poetry is partly driven by my age. With a poem you can respond to a prompt or notion, play with it, revise it, and FINISH it in a reasonable amount of time. I figure that I’m naturally gravitating to things that I can finish. Call it done. Move on to the next thing I want to say something about, and know that I’ll be around long enough to do so. I also think that the poetry I am writing in this book very much runs right up into memoir, and in that way, the MFA in creative nonfiction plays a role in my thinking and writing. Many of the sort of “principles” feel the same, attention to the telling detail, the universality in personal stories, and observing the world through a unique-to-you lense.

I’m going to do a book launch for Nobody Cares What You Think at Charlotte Art League’s gallery on February 14, 6-9:00 p.m., in conjunction with a show opening there that I co-curated called “Latrina Ekphrastic” — it’s art and words from local poets and artists and it’s going to be hung in the gallery bathrooms. I think readings that night will definitely be in order, maybe not IN the bathrooms, but just outside.

For readers who want to know more about Chris and her creative endeavors, please click on the following link: https://www.chrisarvidson.com/index.htm

I congratulate Chris on the publication of Nobody Cares What You Think, and I thank her for her many and varied contributions to Storied Charlotte’s creative side.

Tags: poetry

The Response of Charlotte Writers to Jimmy Carter’s Books

December 21, 2024 by Mark West

I am writing this Storied Charlotte blog post on December 21, 2024, which is the official release date for The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter: Essays on the President’s Books. I have been working on editing this book for the past two years, so it is gratifying to see this work come to fruition.

When I began editing this book, I invited writers with Charlotte connections to join the other contributors to the collection. These Charlotte writers not only wrote essays for the book, but they also became part of a broader community of scholars who share an interest in President Carter’s career as an author. In many ways, this book is associated with this community, a community that has strong ties to Charlotte.

Now that the book is officially launched, I think that it is a fitting time to acknowledge the roles that Charlotte writers played in making this book a reality. Frye Gaillard, a former reporter for The Charlotte Observer, went from being a contributor to joining me as the co-editor of this collection. Frye wrote or co-wrote several of the essays in the collection, and he threw himself into the editing process. Other Charlotte writers who contributed to the collection include Paula Connolly, Boyd Davis, Paula Eckard, Jeffrey Leak, Richard Leeman, Ronald Lunsford, Emily Seelbinder, Daniel Shealy, and Meredith Troutman-Jordan.

For readers who want more information about the book, please click of the following link: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538188330/The-Literary-Legacy-of-Jimmy-Carter-Essays-on-the-Presidents-Books

President Carter will always be associated with his hometown of Plains, Georgia, and with Atlanta, which is home to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. However, with the publication of The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Storied Charlotte has emerged as something of a hotbed of scholarship on President Carter’s books.

Tags: President Jimmy Carter

Charlotte Lit Finds a Home of Their Own

December 15, 2024 by Mark West

The celebrated English author Virginia Woolf is best known for her modernist novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, but she also wrote memorable essays. In one of her essays, she discussed the importance of having a place to write. “A woman must have,” according to Woolf, “a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” This quotation came to mind when I heard the great news that the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, more commonly known as Charlotte Lit, has recently found a permanent home. As I see it, Woolf’s point about an individual author’s need to have a place to write also applies to writing organizations, such as Charlotte Lit.

Since its founding in 2015, Charlotte Lit has aspired to provide area writers with an inviting place to take writing classes and workshops, participate in conversations and readings, and write and reflect in a space that promotes creativity and conviviality. For the past two years, however, Charlotte Lit has been working out of a shared space. Although this space has worked, it was not really a room of their own. Well, that is about to change. About a week ago, Charlotte Lit announced that it will soon be moving to a new permanent home. Curious about this development, I contacted Paul Reali, Charlotte Lit’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, and asked him for more information about Charlotte Lit’s big news. Here is what he sent to me:

Mark, we’re excited to tell you and your readers about Charlotte Lit’s new home, and a little about how we got here.

Writers and readers know about the importance of setting, of place. Kathie Collins, our co-founder, has long said there would have been no Charlotte Lit without the Midwood International & Cultural Center, the place it all started. That old school building had everything we needed: a great vibe, affordable rent, and parking. (We can’t overstate the importance of free and easy parking.) We had seven great years there until the building was bought for redevelopment.

We’ve spent the last two years inside hygge coworking’s Belmont neighborhood location, a move that was always intended to be temporary. It worked well enough—an office and shared meeting rooms where we could hold classes—but those rooms weren’t ours. They didn’t feel like Charlotte Lit, and our community noticed.

What would it take, we were asked quite frequently, for Lit to have its own space again? We laughed and said dollars. In fact, it wasn’t just that. Unless it was a ridiculous number of dollars—enough to build our own perfect place from scratch—we needed to find an existing place to meet our specific (read: uncommon) needs.

We looked for two years. We didn’t find a place like that in (or out!) of our price range.

A few months ago, Paula Martinac—an author with a great sense of place, who is also Lit’s community coordinator—saw a “Space for Lease” sign on a building Uptown none of us had noticed before. The building’s name—the Ascend Nonprofit Center—caused a flash of recognition. Could this place be like the Midwood Center, the place with everything, and designed for nonprofit orgs?

Mark, it is exactly that.

We’ll be moving to Ascend this spring, at the corner of 5th and Davidson, on the edge of Uptown. It’s inside the I-277 loop but outside the congestion, which makes it central to the whole community. We’ll have 1200 multi-use square feet on the first floor for classes, lit arts events, and our offices.

It’s such a great space, and we can’t wait to welcome our community there. We have plans to make it feel warm, welcoming, and inspiring. We’re grateful to be working with Merriman Schmitt Architects, thanks to our longtime friends and supporters Anne and Steve Schmitt.

And the other things we needed? Ascend has nine shared breakout and meeting rooms, for big events like our three year-long Labs, just steps from our new space. It’s affordable, priced for nonprofits. No small thing, it has parking—lighted, ample, and free.

And: it’s a 10-year lease—renewable. Which means it’s a permanent home for Charlotte Lit, at last.

The space will include one more exciting feature: the Dannye Romine Powell Poetry Place, to honor our great friend and teacher. Picture a raised platform with comfortable armchairs, side tables and reading lights, and bookshelves of poetry and craft books. This will be a wonderful place for our members to read and write during our Open Studio hours. And—Kathie’s design inspiration—the platform can be converted in an instant to be the stage for our readings and community conversations.

For a small nonprofit, this is a huge step in our continuing commitment to the Charlotte community, and we will need community support to make it happen. We’re budgeting $100,000 for infrastructure, tables and chairs, audio-visual, bookshelves, food service area, and so on. Ascend has given us a generous up-fit allowance, and with year-end donations we’re close to $60,000 already. We’re confident our community will contribute the rest. (Here’s the link: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/charlotte-lit/charlotte-lit-ascend-capital-campaign)

Mark, thank you for helping us get the word out. We’re looking forward to welcoming you and our whole community to our new place in May.

I know that I speak for everyone in Storied Charlotte in wishing everyone associated with Charlotte Lit all the best as they make their big move into their new home of their own.

Tags: Charlotte Lit

Nancy Stancill’s New Mystery Is Both a Thriller and a Work of Alternate History

December 08, 2024 by Mark West

Since retiring from her career as an investigative reporter for The Charlotte Observer in 2009, Nancy Stancill has focused much of her attention on writing her Annie Price mystery series. The third book in this series, Deadly Secrets, will officially launch on December 12, 2024.

This book has many connections to Nancy’s life in Charlotte. Like Nancy, Annie Price is an investigative reporter. Also like Nancy, Annie Price lives in Charlotte but has a deep interest in the Blowing Rock area. In one important way, however, the setting for Deadly Secrets is different from the place that Nancy now calls home, for in Nancy’s novel North Carolina has been divided into two states. The mountain area is now called Westcarolina, and it is the location of a series of secret and deadly plots. For this reason, Deadly Secrets is both a political thriller and a work of alternate history.

I recently contacted Nancy and asked her how she came to write Deadly Secrets. Here is what she sent to me:

Deadly Secrets, my first novel set in Charlotte, launches Thursday, Dec. 12. The first two books of the mystery series take place in Texas, where I worked as a reporter for 15 years. Why did it take so long to bring my protagonist, Annie Price, investigative reporter, to North Carolina? It’s a question I’ve asked myself since I began creating Deadly Secrets about three years ago.

Fourteen years ago, I was newly retired and living in London when I began writing Saving Texas, inspired by some fairly dangerous reporting I did for the Houston Chronicle. The stories involved a corrupt community college. The resulting book morphed into a secession theme. Texas is one of several states where support for seceding from the United States is unusually popular.

In my second book, Winning Texas, my reporter Annie investigates a variation on secession. I knew I wanted to write a third book set in North Carolina and waited for inspiration. In the meantime, I wrote a memoir called Tall, which focused on my experiences as a six-foot-tall woman.

National conservative politics gave me a hook for setting my third book in North Carolina. What if a mega-minister of a huge evangelical church got state and national support to split North Carolina into two states? The minister, Kingston Avery, would become governor of the renamed Westcarolina and begin to remake it as “the first Christian state.”

Politicians would be thrilled to have two new conservative senators and a few more Congressional representatives in the conservative-oriented new state. King, the new minister-governor, would begin taking away personal freedoms with strange new policies. Soon, Annie, newly hired by the fictional Charlotte Press, is investigating King, his church and state and its secret plots and murders. King’s major headquarters are in his 12-bedroom mansion in Blowing Rock, a favorite town of mine.

Hurricane Helene blew through the mountains as I was preparing to launch the book. Since I have loved the N.C. mountains since childhood, I decided to devote half my book proceeds to a charity, https://www.heartswithhands.org

As usual, I called upon my own experiences being recruited by the Charlotte Observer to describe Charlotte as I saw it as a stranger in 1993. In her job interview, Annie sees the busy airport, the beautiful tall buildings and verdant landscape of uptown and the morning energy of the newspaper’s newsroom. (Of course, the building was imploded a few years ago and there is no newsroom. I couldn’t bear to use that in the book. Since it’s fiction, I describe it as it was when I first started working there.)

Annie initially worries that Charlotte will be too small and quiet after the roaring energy of Houston. But she loves the vibe of an easier city to live in after the traffic and pollution problems of Houston. Much of the book contains other familiar details: Annie’s first home in Plaza Midwood, her move to a luxurious Myers Park house after her marriage, and the delicious barbecue lunch she enjoys at Bridges Barbecue in Shelby.

As a writer and now a 31-year resident of Charlotte (minus three years in London) I found that finally setting a book here was a pure pleasure.

(Stancill’s book is available now at Park Road Books for $19.95 and as of Dec. 12, on Amazon and other online sites. It’s published by Black Rose Writing of Texas. A book signing is scheduled at Park Road Books on Jan. 9.) For more information about Deadly Secrets and Nancy’s other books, please click on the following link: https://www.nancystancill.com

I congratulate Nancy on the publication of Deadly Secrets. As everyone who has read my blog knows, I take a special interest in novels written by residents of Charlotte as well as novels set in Charlotte. Since Deadly Secrets checks both boxes, it makes a great addition to Storied Charlotte’s literary history (or alternate history).

Tags: Alternate History mystery novel

Spreading the Word about the History of the Steele Creek Neighborhood

November 30, 2024 by Mark West

Back in 2021, I wrote a Storied Charlotte blog post about Christopher S. Lawing and his book Charlotte: The Signs of the Times—A History Told Through the Queen City’s Classic Roadside Signage, and we have been in email correspondence ever since. I mentioned in one of my messages to Christopher that I wanted to know if he had plans to bring out another book. Well, about two weeks ago Christopher’s name popped up in my inbox. I opened his email and read the following: “I’ve promised to let you know when I had another book coming out and that time is now—at least, sort of! While I did not author it, I am publishing it. The book is titled Steele Creek: An Early History by Linda Blackwelder. Through a serendipitous chain of events over the last two months, I had the opportunity to partner with Linda to bring her 2018 book back into print, and I was honored to do so. It is at the printing house now.” Curious to know more, I asked Christopher how he came to republish a book about the history of the Steele Creek neighborhood. Here is what he sent to me:

How I came to republish this book is a fascinating story. In early August of this year, The Charlotte Ledger published an article on endangered historic properties in the Steele Creek area of Mecklenburg County, all of which were owned by the airport. One of these, the William Grier House (1828) was—and is—facing potential demolition, and it captivated me in such a way that I did a deep dive into the architectural and cultural history of the home. Ironically, I learned that the house had been moved in 2008/09 to its current location to avoid being demolished due to a development. Serendipitously, a friend at my church connected me to their cousin whose extended family was responsible for preserving the house at that time—that individual was a member of Steele Creek’s prominent Byrum family. She told me about a book that covered “anything and everything Steele Creek.” She had a copy and generously loaned it to me.

Very quickly I realized that I needed a copy for myself. It was originally published in 2018 by the author, Linda Lawless Blackwelder, and immediately sold out three consecutive times for a total of 300 copies. They are rare and hard to come by. I was smitten with the book and the meticulous detail with which it was researched and written, and I knew that this authoritative guide to the history of Steele Creek needed to be spread even further and wider to help tell the often forgotten and overlooked history of the area. I reached out to Linda through her email address which was listed in the book…and she replied!

In the couple months that followed, Linda and I became fast friends as we engaged in many conversations about our passion for history, telling the stories of our communities, the history of Steele Creek specifically, and all this ultimately led to me undertaking a republishing of her book in a limited run of 500 copies. It is an honor to combine our talents to bring Linda’s 270-page book back to the bookshelves of our greater community, being printed exactly as it was when it first came out. I have applied my printing and distribution industry knowledge to the project, experience which I gained from publishing my own book, Charlotte: The Signs of the Times, in 2017. In fact, the same local printer who printed Linda’s book back in 2018 won the bid to undertake the 2024 printing run as well, which is exciting because they are in located in the HEART of Steele Creek!

Linda is truly a wonderful walking encyclopedia of “anything and everything Steele Creek.” She has lived in and advocated for the community for over 55 years, founded the Steele Creek Residents Association and the Steele Creek Historical & Genealogical Society, and has collected memories, photographs, recollections, and stories in a way which will never be able to be duplicated again. This book is a result of her life’s research and passion, and while the book can occasionally lean genealogically heavy, it is written in such a way that it retains the interest of the reader, while weaving in stories and other historical time markers and context, all the while being very well organized. It simultaneously functions as both a riveting reading experience and as a research companion.

Pre-orders are underway, with the books arriving in time to start shipping out to customers beginning December 9th. May I suggest this book as a wonderful Christmas gift for the historian or for anyone interested in learning a bit more about the Steele Creek area and its heritage. This web address will take readers directly to the order page where they can also learn more about the book:

https://www.cltsignsproject.com/product-page/steele-creek-an-early-history-book

I am very pleased that Christopher is bringing Linda’s book about Steele Creek back into print. I often refer to Charlotte as a community, but Charlotte is really an interlinked collection of many diverse communities, each with its own history. In a sense, Linda’s Steele Creek: An Early History is an important chapter in the rich history of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Steele Creek

Contact Me

Links

Archives