Jamila Minnicks
The Friends of the Washington County Public Library celebrate the beginning of the annual Sunday with Friends literary series.
Martin Clark, author of “The Plinko Bounce” speaks Jan. 21 This is his sixth legal thriller set in Southwest Virginia. This one follows a dedicated public defender, Andy Hughes, as he struggles with the case of an accused killer who has admitted to a murder--yet may escape punishment on a legal technicality. Clark is a retired circuit court judge from Patrick County and has been called by a New York Times reviewer “the thinking man’s John Grisham” and by Entertainment Weekly as “our finest legal-thriller writer.” He has been awarded the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award in 2009, 2016, and 2020.
Jim Minick, author of “Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas” speaks Feb. 4. Minick is from Wythe County, Virginia, and his prolific writing career has encompassed fiction, non-fiction, poetry and memoir. His new book tells the story of the deadliest tornado in Kansas history. It follows the story of the event, minute-by-minute, from the perspective of the survivors. The tornado killed 82 people and injured 270 others, more than half of the town’s population of approximately 600. One of Minick’s purposes in the work is to point out how we in America are increasingly being shaped by the weather as our climate seems to be drastically changing.
Patricia Hudson comes to the podium Feb, 18. Her debut novel, “Traces,” tells the story of one of America’s most iconic figures, Daniel Boone, and the westward expansion that he was central to—from the perspective of Rebecca Boone, Daniel’s wife, and their two eldest daughters, Susannah and Jemima. Hudson corrects history, giving voice to the independent and resourceful women who struggled for survival on the frontier. Hudson lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, and has coedited “Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia,” and coauthored “The Carolinas and the Appalachian States,” a volume in the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America series.
Diane Flynt speaks March 3. She is the author of “Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South.” Southerners at one time cultivated 2,000 apple varieties from Virginia to Mississippi. Today, many of those varieties have disappeared. Flynt has researched the history of apples, touching on connections to slavery, to theft of Indigenous lands, to Queen Victoria’s court, to Belgian immigrants, and to the Oregon Trail. She points to hopeful signs of restoration of many apple varieties in the future.
Meet Anna Zeide, director of the Food Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech, March 24 who has written “U.S. History in 15 Foods.” The book takes everyday food items and shows the part they played in the making of the U.S. What did the British colonists think about the corn they observed Indigenous people growing? How are oranges connected to Roosevelt’s New Deal? What can green bean casserole tell us about gender roles in the mid-20th century?
Annual Celebration of Regional Poetry is held April 7. Meet Linda Parsons to celebrate her new book of poetry, “Valediction,” during National Poetry Month. The collection travels inward and outward, exploring life’s oppositions: parental and relationship struggles and losses, home and away, the mystical and spiritual versus the physical, balancing grief and reemergence, hello and goodbye. The volume is a hybrid, featuring poems, diptychs, as well as micro-essays. Parsons will be joined by other poets from the region including Jim Minick whose new book, “The Intimacy of Spoons” uses the spoon as a metaphor for many observations, from love and marriage to the spoon of a grave that holds our bodies.
Jamila Minnicks visits April 21. Minnicks is the author of “Moonrise Over New Jessup,” which won the latest PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, sponsored by Barbara Kingsolver. The novel is set in the late 1950s and early 60s with the main character Alice struggling between holding on to the security she has found in New Jessup (an all-Black Alabama town that has rejected integration in favor of a separate existence) versus supporting her love whose secret activism threatens this status quo. Minnicks is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Howard University School of Law. She lives in Washington, DC.
Ed Ayers speaks May 5. Ayers, one of the most distinguished historians in America, speaks about his latest book, “American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860.” This period saw the expansion of slavery, dispossession of Native Americans, mass immigration, technological advances, and many other forces that began to shape American culture through traditions of dissent and innovation that are the foundations of America today. He is originally from Kingsport, Tennessee.
Clint Miller speaks May 19. Abingdon native Miller has written a lightly fictionalized comic history, “Freud in America: The Funniest Story in the History of Psychology, Sex, and the Subconscious,” about a six-week trip that Sigmund Freud and his young protégé Carl Jung made to America in 1909 to explain his new theories about the subconscious to the intelligentsia of young America. After facing stern criticism in Europe, Freud hoped to gain legitimacy for his theories and to revolutionize therapy in America. Miller, a Harvard University graduate, is a playwright, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, and producer, currently living in Mexico.
The Friends of the Washington County Public Library sponsor the “Sunday with Friends” literary series. All events are free and open to the public. They include receptions, book sales and signings. For more information, call 276-676-6298 or visit www.wcpl.net.
