2025 PAST EVENTS
Event with Robert Busby + Gerry Wilson
Tuesday, June 10th | 5:00pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Robert Busby signs BODOCK.

In 1994, the real Mid-South Ice Storm strikes the fictitious town of Bodock in Claygardner County, Mississippi. In the wake of the storm, what is left unbroken, and what broken things can be rebuilt? Hailed by Maurice Carlos Ruffin as “leaving no feeling untouched,” Robert Busby’s debut balances grit with heart, violence with depth, and tragedy with humor. Two siblings survey the damage to their family’s orchard after the storm while their rich nephew circles in the hopes of buying up the property...

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Event with Lauren Rhoades + Ellen Ann Fentress
Tuesday, June 3rd | 4:30pm
Signing at 4:30pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Lauren Rhoades signs SPLIT THE BABY.

In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures with rich but conflicting religious traditions, the young girl struggles...

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Event with Michael Farris Smith
Saturday, May 31st | Cathead Distillery
Event begins at 3:00pm

Michael Farris Smith signs LAY YOUR ARMOR DOWN.

A dark Southern tale of desperate souls who've wound up on the road of poor choices, a messianic child with untold powers, and those out hunting her for their own reward, all drawn together by Michael Farris Smith's trademark mournful, spirit-gnawing prose. An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose...

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Event with Sherry Cothren
Saturday, May 17th | 12:00pm
Signing at 12:00pm

Sherry Cothren signs GADFLY.

Sherry Cothren has wielded a pen since her youth, recording her thoughts and feelings, her “writings” as she calls them, in reams of yellow legal pads. A longtime musician, Cothren’s words have often been used as song lyrics in her various bands, from the Germans and Beat Temptation through the Windbreakers and others. Beyond sharing them with friends and bandmates, though, her prose has largely just existed as ink on lined paper...

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Event with Tom Spencer
Wednesday, May 14th | 5:00pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Tom Spencer signs THE MYSTERY OF THE CROOKED MAN.

Meet Agatha Dorn, cantankerous archivist, grammar pedant, gin afficionado and murder mystery addict. When she discovers a lost manuscript by Gladden Green, the Empress of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha's life takes an unexpected twist. She becomes an overnight sensation, basking in the limelight of literary stardom. But Agatha's newfound fame takes a nosedive when the 'rediscovered' novel is exposed as a hoax...

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Event with Kwame Alexander + Jerry Craft
Tuesday, May 13th | 4:30pm
Signing at 4:30pm | Reading at 5:00pm

Kwame Alexander + Jerry Craft
sign J vs. K.

Created by real-life rivals and #1 New York Times bestselling authors Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft this hilarious illustrated story features two talented fifth graders going head-to-head in a competition for the ages. J and K are the most creative fifth graders at Dean Ashley Public School (DAPS). J loves to draw and his wordless stories are J-ENIUS! K loves to write and his stories are K-LASSIC!! Both J and K are determined to win the DAPS annual creative storytelling contest or at least get in the top five...

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Storytime Event with Brandall Laughlin
Saturday, May 10th | 10am
Storytime begins at 10am

Brandall Laughlin signs DO BUTTERFLIES MAKE BUTTER.

Years ago, Brandall's young son came to her while she was working in her garden and asked, "Mama, do butterflies make butter?"And the idea for this book was born that very day. The tractor in each illustration is a nod to her son and his love of the outdoors. Do butterflies make butter? Yes, absolutely! Yes, indeed! In the spring, summer, and fall, butterflies go from place to place, gathering petals from yellow flowers-piles and piles, until they have enough....

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Event with Nadia Alexis + Tyriek White
Thursday, May 8th | 5:00PM
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Nadia Alexis signs BEYOND THE WATERSHED.

A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation, using stunning imagery drawing from the body, spirit, nature, and cityscapes. Alexis traces journeys to...

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Event with Malia Logan + Olivia Omega
Saturday, May 3rd | 4:00pm
Signing begins at 4pm

Malia Logan + Olivia Omega sign THROUGH HER EYES.

In Through Her Eyes, Olivia Omega and her daughter, Malia Logan, take readers on a profound generational journey through the intertwined narratives of their lives, offering parallel perspectives on the experiences that have shaped them as Black women. This memoir, co-written with heartfelt honesty and unfiltered emotion, delves deep into the bonds that connect mothers and daughters. As a seasoned branding expert and new college grad, it explores the unique challenges and triumphs that define their shared and individual identities...

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Event with Jaz Brisack + Derenda Hancock
Thursday, May 1st | 5:00PM
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Jaz Brisack signs GET ON THE JOB AND ORGANIZE.

ell and A History of America in Ten Strikes, the leader of the Starbucks and Tesla union movements shares stories from the front lines to help us organize our own workplaces. Get on the Job and Organize is a compelling, inspirational narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement...

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Event with Robert M. Edsel
Saturday, April 26th | 9:30AM
Signing 9:30AM - 10:30AM

Robert M. Edsel signs REMEMBER US.

Like The Monuments Men, Remember Us is an ensemble piece that follows twelve main characters over a six-year span, zeroing in on ordinary people including Frieda van Schäik, a teenager who falls in love with an American soldier; Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, the first member of the 101st Airborne to receive the Medal of Honor; and Sergeant Jeff Wiggins of the 960th Quartermaster Service Company, who escaped the poverty and racism of Alabama for yet another indignity—digging graves...

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Event with Jane Lopes
Thursday, April 24th | 5:00pm
at Levure Bottle Shop
Signing + wine tasting at 5:00pm

Jane Lopes signs HOW TO DRINK AUSTRALIAN.

The landscape of Australian wine is cracking with new energy and historic traditions that make it one of the most exciting wine-producing countries in the world right now. But the scholarship on Australian wine hasn't always matched the output. How to Drink Australian corrects that. It takes readers on a journey around the country, state by state, region by region. Each state has an introduction. And the most significant regions have their own separate chapters within each state....

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Workshop Event with Anthony Thaxton
Saturday, April 19th | 2pm
Book Discussion + Drawing Workshop

Anthony Thaxton signs THE DOODLE DEVOTIONAL.

The Doodle Devotional is an eight week devotional study that will give you a new way to interact with Scripture and deepen your commitment to God. Author, artist, and painter Anthony Thaxton shares his wonderful God-given artistic gifts alongside memorable Scripture verses and thoughtful daily devotionals. Doodle Devotional is for everyone who wants to marry their love of Scripture with the art world...

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STORYTIME
Saturday, April 19th | 10am



The Millsaps College Visiting Writers & Bettye Jolly Lecture Series
Thursday, April 10th | 4:30pm



Event with Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Tuesday, April 8th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Jordan LaHaye Fontenot signs HOME OF THE HAPPY.

A riveting blend of true crime and memoir tracing the author’s investigation into the kidnapping and murder of her great-grandfather in 1980s Louisiana and the reverberations on her family and community throughout the decades, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most mystical and overlooked landscapes—the Cajun prairie....

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Event with Landon Bryant + Christina Spann
Saturday, April 5th | 2pm
Signing at 2:00pm | Reading at 2:30pm

Landon Bryant signs BLESS YOUR HEART.

In his debut book, Landon discusses everything you've ever wanted to know about the South, including why they say the things they say, why they eat the things they eat, and what it really means when someone says, "Bless your heart." Every step of the way, Landon infuses his faux field guide with warmth, whimsy, nostalgia, and his trademark down-to-earth personality with equal measure humor and practical information. If you’ve ever wondered why Southerners...

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Event with Kiese Laymon + Tonja Murphy
Thursday, April 3rd | On the lawn at the Eudora Welty House and Garden
Event begins at 4:30pm

Kiese Laymon signs CITY SUMMER, COUNTRY SUMMER.

A lyrical picture book from the award-winning author of Heavy, about three Black boys who form a deep connection during a transformative summer trip down South to visit family. On the ground of that garden, covered in vegetables and dirt, coated in laughter, I want to say that the Mississippi and New York in our Black boy bodies were indistinguishable. Three Black boys spend one special summer exploring the Mississippi woods and woulds and coulds of sharing the kind of freeing friendship that is love....

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Event with Chris La Tray
Saturday, March 29th | 2pm
Signing at 2:00pm | Reading at 2:30pm

Chris La Tray signs BECOMING LITTLE SHELL.

Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother’s consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage. When La Tray attended his grandfather’s funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. “Who were they?” he wondered, and “Why was I never allowed to know them?” Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists...

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Event with Kendall Smith
Saturday, March 22nd | 12pm
Signing at 12:00pm

Kendall Smith signs LOADING DOCK TO PRESIDENT.

Kendall Smith transparently shares his fifty-year career in the office products and contract furniture industry, which ultimately led to his ownership of a ten-million-dollar company. In vivid detail he describes the immediate realization of the insurmountable debt that he and his partner had incurred, and the ensuing decade of battling financial hurdles, betrayal by former employees, and cheating competitors...

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Event with Jordan Lindsay Starck
Tuesday, March 18th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Lindsay Starck signs MONSTERS WE HAVE MADE.

A poignant and evocative novel that explores the bounds of familial love, the high stakes of parenthood, and the tenuous divide between fiction and reality. Thirteen years ago, Sylvia Gray's young daughter, Faye, attacked her babysitter in order to impress the Kingman, a monster she and her best friend had encountered on the Internet. When the now twenty-three-year-old Faye goes missing, leaving her toddler behind, Sylvia launches a search that propels her back into the past and back into...

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Event with Gary Krist
Thursday, March 13th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Gary Krist signs TRESPASSERS AT THE GOLDEN GATE.

Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veil, she drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. “I did it and I don’t deny it,” she said when arrested shortly thereafter. “He ruined both myself and my daughter.”...

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STORYTIME
Saturday, March 8th | 10am



Event with Chad Holley + Gerry Wilson
Tuesday, March 4th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Chad Holley signs SHIELD THE JOYOUS.

MICHAEL HALEY, a whip-smart seventh-grader growing up in rural Mississippi in the early 1980s, has a precociously metaphysical turn of mind, a brand-new girlfriend who won’t come out of her bedroom, and plenty of neighborhood pals to distract him from both. But as he passes the long afternoon of this story roaming their streets, yards, and woods with the likes of Zeke Barry (his girlfriend’s brother and a born skeptic) and John Dixon Montgomery (a diminutive fishing genius plagued by assorted maladies), unsettling questions won’t leave Michael alone...

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Event with Adam Gussow
Saturday, March 1st | 2pm
Signing at 2:00pm | Reading at 2:30pm

Adam Gussow signs MY FAMILY AND I.

What has happened to the dream of beloved community embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement of the early 1960s—the vision of a just, humane, and colorblind America, a nation of “black and white together” animated by the spirit of mutual respect and strengthened by the bonds of brotherly love? As Adam Gussow shows in this urgently needed new book, the dream, although pressured on every front, remains alive...

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Event with Catherine Hamrick
Thursday, February 27th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Catherine Hamrick signs THE TEARS OF THINGS.

“Whatever life hands me—love, land, or loss—a way to acceptance means embracing earthly cycles, authentic connections to others, and the comforting puzzle of words,” says Catherine Hamrick. Processing depression and the loss of her parents, she explores the therapeutic value of nature and poetry in The Tears of Things. This collection charts her movement through changing relationships, landscapes...

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Event with Catherine Simone Gray + Lauren Rhoades
Tuesday, February 25th | 4:30
Signing at 4:30pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Catherine Simone Gray signs PROUD FLESH.

A searing portrait of a mother’s body—a resurrection and reclamation of pleasure after abuse, a study of intergenerational trauma, and a love letter to the bodies of women: as alive and unbound as the teeming Mississippi wilds that bear witness. Four months postpartum with her second child, Catherine Simone Gray is back at her doctor’s office, surveying a childbirth wound...

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Event with Callan Wink + John Evans
Wednesday, February 19th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Callan Wink signs BEARTOOTH.

Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Peter Heller and Donald Ray Pollock. In an aging, timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid, on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving off the wild after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging..

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Event with Tony Jones
Wednesday, February 12th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Tony Jones signs THE GOD OF WILD PLACES.

Millions of Americans, disillusioned with organized religion, yearn for meaning and transcendence in their lives, and many of them are finding that in nature. When pastor and theologian Tony Jones, Ph.D., had his crisis of faith, brought on by personal trauma and broken relationships, he sought solace in the outdoors - paddling a canoe, hunting with his dog, butchering deer...

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STORYTIME
Saturday, February 8th | 10am



Event with Beth Kander + Catherine Simone Gray
Monday, February 3rd | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Beth Kander signs I MADE IT OUT OF CLAY.

A darkly hilarious novel about a Jewish woman in Chicago who creates a golem in a moment of desperation and unearths the greatest fear she’s ever faced, for fans of Ashley Poston and Shelby Van Pelt. Nothing’s going well for Eve: she’s single and about to turn 40, the ad agency where she works is flailing, several creepy incidents have her on edge, her dad died last year and her family still won’t talk about their grief… and, of course, the whole world’s a dumpster fire....

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Event with Cathy Schieffelin
Saturday, February 1st | 12pm
Signing at 12pm

Cathy Schieffelin signs THE CALL.

Nate, a journalist, awakens to a horrifying discovery in the remote Comoros Islands as the call to prayer echoes around him. Summoned to assist with the crisis, Juliette faces battles on both professional and personal fronts. As their relationship blossoms amidst the chaos, Nate and Juliette confront not only the threat of an unknown virus but also the shadows of their own pasts...

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Event with Andy Corren
Thursday, January 30th | 5pm
Signing at 5:00pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Andy Corren signs DIRTBAG QUEEN.

“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, a “loud, filthy‑minded (and filthy‑mouthed) Jewish lady redneck...

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Event with Omo Moses + Albert Sykes
Saturday, January 25th | 2pm
Event begins at 2:00pm

Omo Moses signs THE WHITE PERIL.

In The White Peril, Omo Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather's sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses. The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans 3 generations of an African American family, all shining a light on the Black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice...

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Event with Adam Ross + Todd Portnowitz
Thursday, January 16th | 5:00
Signing at 5pm | Reading at 5:30pm

Adam Ross signs PLAYWORLD.

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse. Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother...

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Event with Chris Whitaker
Saturday, January 11th | 2pm
Signing at 2:00pm | Reading at 2:30pm

Chris Whitaker signs ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another....

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