Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation

Verse & Vino
2022-11-10 19:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | NC
SAVE THE DATE
Some call it the greatest book club ever assembled.
Verse & Vino is Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation’s signature annual fundraiser. This celebration of reading, writing and the joy of libraries – shared with a community of readers and New York Times best-selling authors – has become one of our region’s most anticipated events.
Since its debut in 2014, Verse & Vino has outgrown a venue, welcomed over thirty New York Times best-selling authors to Charlotte readers, gone (temporarily) virtual, and become one of the region’s most anticipated annual literary events.
Learn more on our Verse & Vino page.

An Introduction to Estate Planning
2022-10-27 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
Join the Library Foundation and moderator and board member Jennifer Green for a virtual lunchtime program at no charge to learn helpful tips and insights from Debra Foster, an esteemed local attorney who specializes in estate planning.
Debra shares why and how we should all think about our future needs and legacy plans. There will also be ample time for questions following her presentation.
CLICK HERE to register for this event.

Book Club Madness
2022-09-14 - 2022-10-21 | NC
Think your book club is the best? Prove it.
Registration is now open.
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation presents the first-ever competition for book clubs. Through a series of five weekly games book club members will win points for their club. Much like March Madness, book club teammates can score two pointers, three pointers and free throws for their club, along with fun weekly prizes and bragging rights.
Learn more on our Book Club Madness page.

Final Draught: Deadly Declarations with Landis Wade
2022-08-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Town Brewing Company, 800 Grandin Rd, Charlotte, NC, 28208, United States
Deadly Declarations with Landis Wade

GET TICKETS

Tuesday, August 23, 2022
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
An unlikely trio of retirees try to solve a man’s death, his strange will, and the 250-year-old colonial period mystery of the controversial and long-vanished First American Declaration of Independence, actions which – if successful – will change United States history. That is, if they don’t die trying.
It’s modern day in the New South City of Charlotte, North Carolina, when three retirees at the Independence Retirement Community, a/k/a The Indie, team up to solve two mysteries related to the death of a 96-year-old resident. Why was his manuscript about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence missing when they found his body? And why did his handwritten will dated the day he died disinherit his beloved granddaughter (his only heir), and leave his $50 million fortune to Sue Ellen Parker, the most despised resident at the Indie?
At the urging of Chuck Yeager Alexander, an optimistic soul who loves historical conspiracies, and Harriet Keaton, a former businesswoman with an extreme dislike of Sue Ellen Parker, Craig Travail, a trial lawyer recently ousted from his law firm after 40 years, reluctantly goes to court to challenge the dead man’s will for the granddaughter. This decision sets in motion a series of dangerous events that could lead the threesome to discover the answer to a revolutionary war period mystery that has evaded historians for 250 years.
Deadly Declarations plunges readers into the world of history and retirement, where getting older is a combination of fear, doubt, humor, and new life, and then transports readers to the courtroom and to the Virginia countryside to prove that age is just a number when searching for and finding the truth about the past.
Join Landis at Town Brewing Company for Final Draught, the Library Foundation’s discussion series featuring conversation, beer and books.

A sizzling combination of historical mystery, courtroom drama, and warm, burgeoning friendships in a retirement community. I tried to stop reading Deadly Declarations. I simply couldn’t put it down.”

Dannye Romine Powell
About the Author

Landis Wade is a recovering trial lawyer, host of Charlotte Readers Podcast, and author of books and stories whose third book—The Christmas Redemption—won the Holiday category of the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, and was the 2018 Holiday category Honorable Mention in the 10th Annual Readers’ Favorite Awards. He won the 2016 North Carolina State Bar short story contest for The Deliberation and received awards for his non-fiction pieces, The Cape Fear Debacle and First Dance. His short work has appeared in Writersdigest.com, The Charlotte Observer, Flying South, Fiction on the Web and in more than six anthologies, including by Daniel Boone Footsteps.

TICKETS: $10
includes the program and light bites
Deadly Declarations will be available for purchase at the event and can be personalized by the author.
Proceeds benefit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE & GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

A Conversation with Kathy Reichs
2022-07-07 19:00 - 20:00 | ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, 300 E 7th St,, Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
A Conversation with Kathy Reichs
IMAGINON WELLS FARGO PLAYHOUSE

GET TICKETS

#1 New York Times bestselling thriller writer Kathy Reichs returns with her twenty-first novel of suspense featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan who, after receiving a box containing a human eyeball, uncovers a series of gruesome killings eerily reenacting the most shocking of her prior cases.
Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball.
GPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens.
There seems to be no pattern to the subsequent killings uncovered, except that each mimics in some way a homicide that a younger Tempe had been called in to analyze. Who or what is targeting her, and why?
Helping Tempe search for answers is detective Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit—and still displaying his gallows humor. Also pulled into the mystery: Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s Montreal-based beau, now working as a private detective.
Could this elaborately staged skein of mayhem be the prelude to a twist that is even more shocking? Tempe is at a loss to establish the motive for what is going on…and then her daughter disappears.
At its core, Cold, Cold Bones is a novel of revenge—one in which revisiting the past may prove the only way to unravel the present.
Join Kathy Reichs at ImaginOn Wells Fargo Playhouse on July 7 for the launch of her latest spine-tingling pagetuner.
About the Author
Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her other Temperance Brennan books include Death du Jour, Deadly Decisions, Fatal Voyage, Grave Secrets, Bare Bones, Monday Mourning, Cross Bones, Break No Bones, Bones to Ashes, Devil Bones, 206 Bones, Spider Bones, Flash and Bones, Bones Are Forever, Bones of the Lost, Bones Never Lie, Speaking in Bones and the Temperance Brennan short story collection, The Bone Collection. In addition, Kathy co-authored the Virals young adult series with her son, Brendan Reichs. The best-selling titles are: Virals, Seizure, Code, Exposure, Terminal, and the novella collection Trace Evidence. The series follows the adventures of Temperance Brennan’s great niece, Tory Brennan. Dr. Reichs’ latest novel, Two Nights, was released July 11 and features Sunday Night, a tough-talking, scarred heroine. Dr. Reichs was also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels.
From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerizing forensic thrillers. For years she consulted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and to the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec. Dr. Reichs has traveled to Rwanda to testify at the UN Tribunal on Genocide, and helped exhume a mass grave in Guatemala. As part of her work at JPAC (Formerly CILHI) she aided in the identification of war dead from World War II, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Reichs also assisted in the recovery of remains at the World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Dr. Reichs is one of only 100 forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and is currently a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte, NC and Montreal, Québec.

Tickets
Individual tickets are $30 and includes a signed book.
Additional copies of Kathy Reichs’ book will be available for purchase at the event. Proceeds benefit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE & GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

Final Draught: Poster Girls with Meredith Ritchie
2022-06-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Town Brewing Company, 800 Grandin Rd, Charlotte, NC, 28208, United States
Poster Girls with Meredith Ritchie

GET TICKETS

After an unwanted southern migration, an upside-down world in 1943 offers military wife and mother, Maggie Slone, a job at Charlotte’s largest wartime employer––the massive and dangerous Shell Assembly Plant.
Meanwhile, military wife and Alabama native, Kora Bell’s steadfast determination enables her to navigate the challenges she faces as a Black woman seeking employment under Jim Crow.
A shared love of literature spurns an unlikely friendship between Kora and Maggie, and the two work together to unify the plant’s workforce. Stringent rules are necessary when the air is charged with gun powder and polite society, until Maggie and Kora must break them in order to support their families, end the war, and bring their husbands home.
Told from two perspectives, Poster Girls is driven by the true but forgotten events and accomplishments of a diverse group of ordinary American women, both relevant and necessary to stop modern cycles of misunderstanding.
Join Meredith at Town Brewing Company for Final Draught, the Library Foundation’s discussion series featuring conversation, beer and books.

It is through books that authors can offer their own stories, so we, as readers, can see ourselves in them and learn.”

MAGGIE SLONE, protagonist
About the Author
Meredith Ritchie has made a career in business communications and wrote this, her first novel, as a cure for acute “empty nest syndrome” after her triplets became adults. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and two cats, who encourage her curiosity of the forgotten triumphs of the spirit—especially those in our own backyard. You can find more about Meredith at Meredithritchie.com, on Instagram at @postergirlsbook, and on Goodreads.

Two Ticket Options
Option A
$10 includes the program and light bites
Option B
$25 includes a signed book, program and light bites.
Additional copies of Poster Girls will be available for purchase at the event.
Proceeds benefit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE & GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

Final Draught: The Tannery with Michael Almond
2022-05-19 18:00 - 20:00 | Town Brewing Company, 800 Grandin Rd, Charlotte, NC, 28208, United States
The Tannery with Michael Almond

GET TICKETS

The Tannery is historical fiction at its best, a murder mystery and legal thriller whose twists and turns will hold readers’ attention to the final page. Meticulously researched, this page-turning debut novel transports readers to another time and place, the story unfolding in the turbulent world of Post-Reconstruction social, political, and racial conditions in North Carolina and throughout the South. Reflecting issues prominent in today’s headlines, themes of Black voter suppression and intimidation, White Supremacy campaigns, the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the violence and depravity of the Red Shirts and vigilante terrorism, and the rise of Jim Crow drive the narrative to its dramatic and surprising conclusion.
Join Michael at Town Brewing Company for Final Draught, the Library Foundation’s themed, quarterly discussion series featuring conversation, beer and books.

The Tannery is tough to put down because the storytelling is so compelling. … This book is timely, in that we can reflect on how far we have come today and see the tangible progress we have made. But it also glaringly reminds us that the issues of racism, voter suppression, and economic inequality are still with us, and indeed, to paraphrase a famous author…the past is not yet passed, it is still with us today.”

Harvey B. Gantt, former mayor of Charlotte, first African American student accepted by Clemson University, inspiration for the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture

About the Author
Michael A. Almond, a retired international business attorney, was raised in the small town of Pilot Mountain in the Piedmont foothills of North Carolina. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was a Fulbright Scholar in political science at the University of Mannheim, Germany. An avid reader of Southern history and literature, Michael and his wife Helen Ruth live at Almond Springs Farm in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with two horses, three donkeys, and their canine companions, Lucy and Greta. The Tannery is his debut novel.

Two Ticket Options
Option A
$10 includes the program and light bites
Option B
$25 includes a signed book, program and light bites.
Additional copies of The Tannery will be available for purchase at the event.
Proceeds benefit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE & GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

Final Draught: The Vote Collectors with Michael Graff & Nick Ochsner
2022-04-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Town Brewing Company, 800 Grandin Rd, Charlotte, NC, 28208, United States
The Vote Collectors with Michael Graff & Nick Ochsner

GET TICKETS

In November 2018, Baptist preacher Mark Harris beat the odds, narrowly fending off a blue wave in the sprawling Ninth District of North Carolina. But word soon got around that something fishy was going on in rural Bladen County. At the center of the mess was a local political operative named McCrae Dowless. Dowless had learned the ins and outs of the absentee ballot system from Democrats before switching over to the Republican Party. Bladen County’s vote-collecting cottage industry made national headlines, led to multiple election fraud indictments, toppled North Carolina GOP leadership, and left hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians without congressional representation for nearly a year.
In The Vote Collectors, Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner tell the story of the political shenanigans in Bladen County, exposing the shocking vulnerability of local elections and explaining why our present systems are powerless to monitor and prevent fraud. In their hands, this tale of rural corruption becomes a fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering—and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South.
At a time rife with accusations of election fraud, The Vote Collectors shows the reality of election stealing in one southern county, where democracy was undermined the old-fashioned way: one absentee ballot at a time.
Join Michael and Nick at Town Brewing Company for Final Draught, the Library Foundation’s themed, quarterly discussion series featuring conversation, beer and books.

A fine-grained and vivid account of the 2018 North Carolina congressional race that was overturned because of electoral fraud…Throughout, the authors weave in intriguing bits of local color and draw trenchant connections to fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election. This doggedly reported chronicle sheds light on America’s political dysfunctions.”

Publishers Weekly

About the Authors
Michael Graff is the southern bureau chief for Axios Local and a reporter for Axios Charlotte. His work has appeared in ESPN, Politico, Garden & Gun, the Guardian, Success, among others. Before Axios, he was the editor of Charlotte magazine, senior editor of Our State magazine, and worked as a reporter for the Fayetteville Observer, the Rocky Mount Telegram, and the Winchester Star. He lives in the NoDa neighborhood of Charlotte with his wife Laura, 2-year-old son George, and 6-year-old mutt Gizmo.
Nick Ochsner is chief investigative reporter for WBTV. He has worked as an investigative reporter in Lubbock, TX and Hampton Roads, Va. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Sarah and their two dogs, Murrow and Cassie.

Two Ticket Options
Option A
$10 includes the program and light bites
Option B
$25 includes a signed book, program and light bites.
Additional copies of The Vote Collectors book will be available for purchase at the event.
Proceeds benefit the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE & GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

A Conversation with Marie Benedict
2022-03-30 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
A Conversation with Marie Benedict
VIRTUAL AUTHOR EVENT

GET TICKETS

Join us for a live conversation with New York Times bestselling historical fiction author Marie Benedict about her latest novel Her Hidden Genius. Benedict’s powerful new work shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.
Join the author on Wednesday, March 30th at noon to learn more about the inspiration behind her latest real-life heroine, Rosalind Franklin. The $30 ticket price includes an access link to live virtual event and an autographed copy of Her Hidden Genius.

Marie Benedict has given us an immense gift: a peek into the inner world of Rosalind Franklin, one of the most brilliant—and overlooked—scientist of her time… This is Benedict’s best work yet, a book that will break your heart, rattle your expectations, and ultimately leave you stunned by the sacrifices one woman made for science.”

—Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of ​Rise of the Rocket Girls

Online registration ends Friday, March 25 at 5 pm.
To sign up after the online registration deadline,
contact Lenny Tran at LTran@cmlibrary.org or 704.416.0805.

Verse & Vino
2021-11-04 00:00 | Virtual and satellite celebrations
Verse & Vino is Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation’s signature annual fundraiser. This celebration of reading, writing and the joy of libraries – shared with a community of readers and New York Times best-selling authors – has become one of our region’s most anticipated events.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Verse & Vino 2020 was transformed into a fast-paced, entertaining virtual event. Verse & Vino 2021 will be a hybrid format – we will build on the success of last year’s broadcast and add more opportunities to gather in person. Public and private gatherings of all sizes throughout the County will be incorporated into the broadcast, and we encourage participants to attend or host one of these celebrations.

Special thanks to PNC, presenting sponsor of Verse & Vino.
Find a list of all Verse & Vino sponsors here.

Carnegie Circle Donor Appreciation Event
2021-09-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
This annual invitation-only event celebrates members of the Carnegie Circle, over 200 Library supporters whose annual gifts of $1,000 or more create a community where reading, learning and imagination thrive.
This year’s event will feature Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Juneteenth.

Special thanks to Bank of America, presenting sponsor of this event.

Damnation Spring: Ash Davidson with Kelly Mustian
2021-08-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
We’re thrilled to co-present this free, virtual evening with our partners at Main Street Books:
ABOUT THE BOOK
An epic, immersive debut, Damnation Spring is the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life.
For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California’s rugged coast. Now Rich and his wife, Colleen, are raising their own young son near Damnation Grove, a swath of ancient redwoods on which Rich’s employer, Sanderson Timber Co., plans to make a killing. In 1977, with most of the forest cleared or protected, a grove like Damnation—and beyond it 24-7 Ridge—is a logger’s dream.
It’s dangerous work. Rich has already lived decades longer than his father, killed on the job. Rich wants better for his son, Chub, so when the opportunity arises to buy 24-7 Ridge—costing them all the savings they’ve squirreled away for their growing family—he grabs it, unbeknownst to Colleen. Because the reality is their family isn’t growing; Colleen has lost several pregnancies. And she isn’t alone. As a midwife, Colleen has seen it with her own eyes.
For decades, the herbicides the logging company uses were considered harmless. But Colleen is no longer so sure. What if these miscarriages aren’t isolated strokes of bad luck? As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, her search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich’s plans for the 24-7, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber along the way.
Told from the perspectives of Rich, Colleen, and Chub, in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, this intimate, compassionate portrait of a community clinging to a vanishing way of life amid the perils of environmental degradation makes Damnation Spring an essential novel for our time.
ABOUT ASH DAVIDSON
Ash Davidson was born in Arcata, California, and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and MacDowell. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
ABOUT KELLY MUSTIAN
Kelly Mustian grew up in Natchez, Mississippi, the southern terminus of the historic Natchez Trace. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and commercial magazines, and her short fiction has won a Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series Award. She is a past recipient of a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts and Science Council. Kelly currently lives with her family near the foothills of North Carolina. The Girls in the Stilt House, her debut novel, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was highlighted by POPSUGAR, Library Journal, and Deep South Magazine as a “must read,” is SIBA bestseller, and has been longlisted for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation for best debut novel set in the American South.

Celebrating Libraries with Karin Slaughter and Jackie Cooper
2021-07-27 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
Our friends at HarperCollins Publishers are celebrating libraries with this free, virtual event:
Join Karin Slaughter in-conversation with Jackie Cooper to celebrate libraries and discuss Karin’s latest standalone, FALSE WITNESS!
KARIN SLAUGHTER is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe, her twenty-one novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New York Times bestselling standalone novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta. Her standalone novel Pieces of Her is in development with Netflix, and the Grant County and Will Trent series are in development for television.
JACKIE COOPER is an American author and film critic. He is the host of the Jackie K. Cooper Show, an entertainment review television show broadcast weekly on Com South and Progressive Tel cable networks in the Middle Georgia area. He is also one of the founders of the Southeastern Film Critics Association and is also a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association. Jackie lives Perry, Georgia, and is the author of 7 books of memoirs and short stories.

Verse & Vino
2020-11-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Virtual, NC, United States
Verse & Vino is a Charlotte literary tradition. This evening of food, wine, and conversation with New York Times best-selling authors celebrates the joy of reading, writing and libraries, and brings together a community of readers in support of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
Verse & Vino is made possible with the generous support of PNC Bank and other corporate, foundation and individual sponsors.

Carnegie Circle Donor Appreciation Dinner with Susan Orlean
2020-09-14 18:00 - 20:45 | NC, United States
An annual invitation-only event celebrating members of the Carnegie Circle, over 200 Library supporters who make annual gifts of $1,000 or more. Learn more about joining the Carnegie Circle here.

This year’s event will feature New York Times best-selling author Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book.

photo credit Noah Fecks
Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of Rin Tin Tin, The Orchid Thief and The Library Book. Orlean has been described by The New York Times Book Review as “a kind of latter-day Tocqueville.” One of her generation’s most distinctive journalistic voices, she is fascinated by American stories of every stripe. From Rin Tin Tin, the orphaned German shepherd who became a silent film star in the 1920s, to John Laroche, the convicted felon who slinks through the swamps of southern Florida looking for rare orchids, Orlean has an eye for the moving, the hilarious, and the surprising. A staff writer at The New Yorker for more than twenty years, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and The Boston Globe, and has edited both Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. Her writing has inspired two films, including Adaptation, the Academy Award-winning film directed by Spike Jonze and starring Meryl Streep.

The Library Book is an exploration of the history, power, and future of these endangered institutions, told through Orlean’s quest to solve a mysterious act of arson that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. It was named one of both The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018 and The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2018. Orlean will adapt The Library Book for a forthcoming television series with Paramount TV.
For more information on Susan Orlean, please visit susanorlean.com.

The Carnegie Circle Dinner is presented by Bank of America.

Final Draught: Janis Joplin, Her Life and Music with Holly George-Warren
2020-01-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Town Brewing Company, 800 Grandin Rd, Charlotte, NC, 28208, United States
Final Draught is a themed, quarterly discussion series…with beer and books!

Holly George-Warren is a two-time Grammy nominee and the award-winning author of sixteen books, including the New York Times bestseller The Road to Woodstock (with Michael Lang) and the
biographies A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton and Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. George-Warren serves on the nominating committee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and teaches at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

About the Book
This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.
Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.
Tickets include discussion, light bites and a copy of Janis: Her Life and Music. Beer will be available for sale.
Buy Tickets

EpicFest
2019-11-09 10:00 - 18:00 | ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, 300 E 7th St,, Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
EpicFest is an extraordinary, free literary festival that brings children, teens and families together with authors, illustrators and the Library.

This event welcomes book-lovers of all ages into a community of readers.
EpicFest is presented to the community by Wells Fargo, with community partner Read Charlotte, and with additional generous support from corporate citizens and individual sponsors.
EpicFest was created to remember and honor Jim and Elizabeth (Libby) Preston’s passion for reading, and to encourage and instill a love of reading in children.

Verse & Vino
2019-11-07 18:00 - 21:30 | Charlotte Convention Center, 501 S. College St., Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Verse & Vino 2019 is currently SOLD OUT! Join our waiting list to be notified if tickets become available.
Verse & Vino is a Charlotte literary tradition. This evening of food, wine, and conversation with New York Times best-selling authors celebrates the joy of reading, writing and libraries, and brings together a community of readers in support of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
Verse & Vino is made possible with the generous support of PNC Bank and other corporate, foundation and individual sponsors.

Carnegie Circle Donor Appreciation Dinner
2019-03-11 18:00 - 20:45 | Foundation For The Carolinas, 220 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
An annual event celebrating members of the Carnegie Circle, over 200 Library supporters who make annual gifts of $1,000 or more.
This year’s event features Marie Benedict, author of The Other Einstein and Carnegie’s Maid. Her new novel, The Only Woman in the Room, is based on the incredible true story of Hedy Lamarr – a glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication.
The Carnegie Circle Dinner is presented by Bank of America, with additional support from Foundation For The Carolinas.

An Evening with Tommy Tomlinson
2019-02-07 19:00 - 20:00 | ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, 300 E 7th St,, Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation and WFAE are pleased to celebrate the release of Tommy Tomlinson’s inspirational memoir The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America. Tommy will speak and take questions about his experience and his writing.
Park Road Books will be onsite with books for sale before and after the program. This event is free, but seating is limited so an RSVP is required.

About the book:
In the tradition of Roxane Gay’s Hunger, a searing, honest, and candid exploration of what it’s like to live as a fat man, from acclaimed journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who decided he had to change his life as he neared the age of fifty weighing in at 460 pounds.
When he was almost fifty years old, Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.
He was only one of millions of Americans struggling with weight, body image, and a relationship with food that puts them at major risk. Intimate and insightful, The Elephant in the Room is Tomlinson’s chronicle of meeting those people, taking the first steps towards health, and trying to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting an exercise goal to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery that is a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take—big and small—to lose weight by the end.

An Evening with Kathy Izard
2018-08-29 18:30 - 20:00 | Morrison Regional Library, 7015 Morrison Blvd., Charlotte, NC, 28211, United States
Moderated by Sonja Gantt
Join us to celebrate the release of a new edition of Kathy Izard’s inspirational memoir about building a home for Charlotte’s homeless. The Hundred Story Home reminds us that not only can we help change the world, but in doing so we change ourselves.
Registration Required

About the Book:
Believing in the whisper was crazy. Denying she had heard it was impossible.
Do Good. Love Well. Kathy Izard grew up believing in this family wisdom. And although she had abandoned her faith years ago, she was proud to serve regularly in her community’s soup kitchen. Then an unexpected encounter with the formerly homeless and bestselling coauthor, Denver Moore, made her realize that though she thought she was doing good, serving soup was not enough.
Following an insistent whisper, Kathy quit her job as a graphic designer and began to do what seemed unimaginable: build a home for Charlotte’s homeless. Kathy was a mother of four, in the second half of life, and the task didn’t make any sense, yet it proved to be her first step in finding her own way home.
In The Hundred Story Home, Kathy invites us to live out our own stories more fully. “Do you ever have the feeling that what you are doing isn’t what you are supposed to be doing? I wrote The Hundred Story Homenot to convince you to solve the homelessness in your community but to help solve the homelessness in you.”
About Kathy Izard:
Kathy Izard was an award-winning graphic designer for twenty years in Charlotte before launching the pilot program Homeless to Homes for the interfaith Urban Ministry Center in 2007. She led the city-wide effort to build Moore Place, Charlotte’s first permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless men and women. After Moore Place opened in 2012, Kathy worked on numerous civic projects most recently leading the development campaign for HopeWay, Charlotte’s first nonprofit residential mental health treatment center which opened in 2016. She wrote about her efforts in the originally self-published memoir The Hundred Story Home which received the 2017 Christopher Award. In 2017, the book and movie rights to her story were purchased by Thomas Nelson, a division of Harper Collins, and a new edition released June 2018. www.kathyizard.com

About Sonja Gantt, Moderator

Sonja Gantt currently serves as the Executive Director of the CMS Foundation. By harnessing the power of private investments in education the CMS Foundation seeds innovative ideas and works to expand programs that accelerate system-wide transformation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Sonja often shares that her work is all about developing a culture of “schoolanthropy”- a spirit of support for our public schools.
Prior to joining the Foundation in 2016, Sonja spent 28 years in television news most recently serving as an anchor/reporter at NBC Charlotte. Her journalism career started in Florence, SC at WBTW and included stints at WBTV (Charlotte) and WGN (Chicago). Her reporting has been celebrated with numerous awards including a Mid-South Regional Emmy in 2011.
Sonja enjoys being involved in the Charlotte community and is currently an active member of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte.
She is a die-hard Tar Heels fan having earned a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from the University of North Carolina after graduating from East Mecklenburg High School. Sonja and her husband Mitch have two children, Gabrielle and Grant.

Charlotte's Growing Literacy Scene: At the Southern Women's Show
2018-08-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Charlotte Convention Center, 501 S. College St., Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Join us at the Southern Women’s Show for a panel discussion of Charlotte’s literary landscape. Jenni Gaisbauer, the Library Foundation’s executive director, will moderate a conversation featuring four longtime friends of the Library: Kimmery Martin, author of Queen of Hearts, Kathy Izard, author of The Hundred Story Home, Helen Kimbrough, author and publisher of multiple children’s books, and Kathie Collins, poet and co-founder of Charlotte Lit.
This panel is included with admission to the Southern Women’s Show.
Purchase Tickets
