USCB - Lunch With Authors Series

Providing a forum for authors is the initiative that created the “Lunch With Author” series in 2001. Always, the aim has been to combine famous authors with not-so-famous authors (mostly Southern) and hopefully introduce our readers to new books and new authors. There are several book debuts this year, and as usual, books will be available for purchase at every luncheon.

The series registration is $270. Individual luncheons are $42. All luncheons are scheduled on Wednesdays and Thursdays and start at 12:00 noon with approximate finish at 2:30 pm. Reservations are necessary and can be made by calling 843-521-4147 or email kingsley@uscb.edu. Checks should be made out and mailed to: USCB Continuing Education, 801 Carteret St., Beaufort, SC 29902, Attn: Jo Ann Kingsley.

Series purchasers receive a “series card” with the luncheon schedule printed on it. Should you be unable to attend a luncheon, you can sell or give the reservation to a friend. There are no tickets as there is a master list in the office and at each luncheon which is why you must check in at the door.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Colleton River Plantation Clubhouse, Bluffton

Charles Martin is back by popular demand....mostly everyone wants to take him home. All that aside, Charles is a highly regarded author with a brand new publisher, Random House, for his latest book, Where the River Ends. It chronicles the love-filled, tragedy-tinged journey of a young couple faced with a life-threatening illness. When the wife makes a list of ten things she hopes to accomplish before she loses the fight for good, her husband supports her in making it all happen. Together, they steal away in the middle of the night to embark upon a 130-mile trip down the St. Mary’s River.

Charles says, “he hopes his stories will cause someone to feel something they haven’t felt, love in a way they had forgotten or hope for something that pain had caused them to scratch off their list.” Other much loved books by Charles Martin are Chasing Fireflies, Maggie, When Crickets Cry, Wrapped in Rain and The Dead Don’t Dance.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Holiday Inn Beaufort 2225 Boundry Street, Beaufort


First time ever for us to feature POETRY with a panel of four poets who will talk about their newly released books. Marjory Wentworth, poet laureate of South Carolina, Karen Peluso, photographer extraordinaire and poet, Carol Ann Davis, College of Charleston poetry professor, and Dan Albergotti, former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review.

Marjory’s second collection of poems, Despite Gravity, is a rich collection ranging from the political to the personal. The title poem was written for the dedication of the new Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge in Charleston. It examines the workers who came from all over the world to “construct a framework/into the endless air, where cables....are as elegant as the strings on a harp/playing the sounds of wind rising off water.”
Karen is the recipient of many awards in both poetry and photography. Her first collection of poems, The Mother—Face in the Mirror, was published as a winner of the 2006 SC Poetry Initiative chapbook contest. Early in 2008, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston partnered with the SC Poetry Initiative and appointed Karen its inaugural Poet in Residence.
Carol Ann’s first collection of poems is Psalm which is a narrative arc which searches for ways of verifying the world through art and experience. One critic said, “her poems are so precise they are almost hallucinatory. And in some poems she sets hallucination free.”
Dan’s first book of poems, The Boatloads, was selected from more than 900 manuscripts as the winner of the seventh annual A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize competition. Edward Hirsch writes in the Foreword, “For this poet, for poetry itself, death is the mother of beauty, as Wallace Stevens said. The poems in Dan Albergotti’s haunting first book are tributes rescued from oblivion. They begin in wonder and end in awe.

Wednesday, January 4, 2009
Sea Pines Conference Center, Hilton Head Island

Geraldine Brooks, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning March and Year of Wonders, is back to the Lunch With Author series, with a real WOW! book, People of the Book. From a review in the NY Times, “Brooks has drawn her inspiration from the real Sarajevo Haggadah. As she explains in an afterword, little is known about this book, except that it has been saved from destruction on at least three occasions: twice by Muslims and once by a Roman Catholic priest. Building on these fragments of information, Brooks has created a fictional history that moves to Sarajevo in 1940, then back to late-19th-century Vienna, 15th-century Venice, Catalonia during the Spanish Inquisition and finally Seville in 1480, the new home of the artist responsible for the Haggadah’s illuminations.” Another review says, “Brooks, inspired by the true story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, brilliantly interweaves an epic historical saga of persecution and survival with a powerful modern-day tale of private betrayals and international intrigue.” People of the Book debuted in January, 2008 and is now on its paperback tour. Prior to fiction writing, Brooks wrote Nine Parts of Desire: The hidden World of Islamic Women based on her many years of living in the Middle East as a Wall St. Journal correspondent. Photo by Randi Baird.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Moss Creek Country Club, Bluffton

It seems the winter months just cry for international intrigue so when Random House publicists said Katherine Neville’s long awaited sequel to The Eight (a NY Times bestseller twenty years ago) would be out fall, 2008, I knew you’d all want her the first available month. The Fire continues the quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne. It spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. You’re taken to 1822, Albania where Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, commissions his young daughter, Haidee, to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania. Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than one thousand years before: Baghdad. Katherine Neville, a southerner, lives in Virginia and has been a guest speaker on the Today Show, Publishers Weekly, Voice of America, National Public Radio, the Poe and Agatha Christie Awards, to name a few.

REGISTRATION: CALL 843-521-4147 OR EMAIL KINGSLEY@USCB.EDU.
SERIES: $270 and INDIVIDUAL LUNCHEONS: $42

Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Dataw Country Club Carolina Room, Beaufort

Nicole Seitz is a name to watch. As a graduate artist, she has exhibited in Charleston galleries, designs all the covers of her books, and as a published author, her writing style echoes Sue Monk Kidd. Her third novel, A Hundred Years of Happiness, makes its debut appearance at the Lunch With Author series as it hits bookstores on March 3rd. It is the story of two daughters searching for the truth they hope will set them free. A Hundred Years of Happiness is a story of family, war, loss and longing, and the transforming power of truth. The distance between children and parents, past and present, reality and deception narrows in this spiritual fable of life after war.
While waiting for novel three, try reading Trouble the Water, which received much acclaim from many sources such as the Library Journal which wrote, “ The South Carolina Lowcountry is the lush setting for this poignant novel about two middle-aged sisters’ journey to self-discovery as they deal with suicide, wife abuse, cancer and grief with the help of some Gullah nannies. Seitz’s writing style recalls that of Southern authors like Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons and Sue Monk Kidd, especially the latter’s The Secret Life of Bees.” A native of Bluffton, Seitz now lives in Mt. Pleasant, north of Charleston.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Country Club of Hilton Head, Hilton Head Plantation

John Thompson is an author you’ve never heard of as this is his first novel and what a book! Please remember you heard of him FIRST at the Lunch With Author series. His book, Armageddon Conspiracy, debuts in October. Anne Rivers Siddons said, “It’s amazing to me the Armageddon Conspiracy is a debut novel. Its pace is breathtaking, and yet the characterizations are deep and full, and the plot is both intricate and intelligent. I think John Thompson is more than on his way. I think he’s there.” His publisher says, “Drawing from 25 years experience as an investment banker on Wall St., Thompson authentically details the closed fraternity of boutique money managers. A thriller, set in the post 9/11 world of international terrorism, Armageddon Conspiracy is a nuanced account only an insider could have written” John Thompson lives with his wife and daughter in Charleston and a mountain home in Hawley, PA. He serves on a number of local non-profit boards such as the Lowcountry Initiative for Literary Arts and on the Executive Committee for the Medical University of South Carolina Foundation.

REGISTRATION: CALL 843-521-4147 OR EMAIL KINGSLEY@USCB.EDU.
SERIES: $270 and INDIVIDUAL LUNCHEONS: $42