A number of regional authors will appear at Literary Bookpost this month for signings, discussions and more.
On Saturday, Sept. 14, Dean Richard Leonard, known as “Rich,” will sign copies of his new book, “The House by the Creek,” with a special hour just for teachers, 10-11 a.m. The general public is welcome 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
A Raleigh judge, Leonard has written a book set in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War and it is based on family legend. This is a tale of settlers’ struggles for liberty, intended for readers ages 9 and up.
Leonard was raised in Davidson County, his father the 12th of 15 children. Leonard spent summers at his maternal grandparents’ farm in Davie County, which he calls his favorite place on earth. At 15, he got a work permit so he could be an assistant librarian at the Welcome Library. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and went to law school at Yale, where the Clintons and Justices Thomas and Alito were classmates. He became a federal judge at 31 and served on the bench until this April, when he was named dean of the Campbell University School of Law.
The grandfather of six children, Leonard wrote his book primarily for them. He remembers asking his father why there were no good history books on North Carolina’s role in the war.
On Sunday, Sept. 15, Literary Bookpost will offer Verbosa Mimosa, 1-4 p.m., an afternoon of mimosas, light fare and four visiting authors. The featured authors are Carrie Knowles, with “Ashoan’s Rug” and her earlier novel, “Lillian’s Garden”; Angela Davis-Gardner, with “Butterfly’s Child”; Peggy Payne, with “Cobalt Blue”; and Elaine Neil Orr, with “A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa.”
The Literary Bookpost will offer 10 percent discount on all purchases during the event. A $5 fee is requested at the door. Please RSVP to the Literary Bookpost at 704-630-9788.
Davis-Gardner is the author of several novels, including “Plum Wine.” “Butterfly’s Child” is about Benji, a child plucked from Nagasaki to live with his American father and stepmother on a farm in Illinois. The family conceals that Benji is the child of an officer and a geisha and says he is an orphan. The book explores life’s transitions and the nature of love.
Davis-Gardner writes of Payne’s novel, “Cobalt Blue”: it “is entrancing and unsettling, a novel that gets at the marrow of sexual and spiritual experience. Peggy Payne is one of our most gifted writers.” Payne’s website describes the book as “a turbulent, gorgeous ride into sacred sex, compulsion, obsession, unmentionable attractions, and ultimate empowering redemption.”
Author Sena Jeter Naslund, who was a guest of the Brady Author’s Symposium at Catawba College, writes of Orr’s book, “A Different Sun,” “Combining elegant writing, rich vision, and impeccable research, ‘A Different Sun’ brings to shimmering life a traveler to West Africa in 1853. Vulnerable yet indomitable, this young woman explores rivers and plains of a new country as she sounds the depths of her own heart. This is a book of high adventure with life-and-death stakes both for the body and the soul.”