Category Archives: announcement

Announcing The Charles Frazier Cold… | Hub City Writers Project

Charles Frazier, Hub City Press Team Up for Brand New Book Series

Source: Announcing The Charles Frazier Cold… | Hub City Writers Project

SPARTANBURG, S.C.—National Book Award Winner Charles Frazier and Hub City Press are teaming up on a new series of books spotlighting extraordinary writers from the American South. Beginning in spring 2019, the Cold Mountain Fund Series will publish literary fiction in hardback.

Frazier, best-selling author of “Cold Mountain,” “Thirteen Moons,” “Nightwoods,” and “Varina,” will provide financial support through the Frazier family’s Cold Mountain Fund at the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. Frazier also will assist in book promotion and make occasional appearances with the Cold Mountain Fund Series authors.

“I have long considered Hub City Press to be one of the very finest independent publishers in the country and am excited to help foster their already excellent offerings of literary fiction,” Frazier said.

Hub City Press, now in its 24th year, is the South’s premier independent literary press. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Hub City is focused on finding and publishing new and extraordinary voices from the South. Among its recent successes are an NPR Book of the Year, a Kirkus Book of the Year, a book longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and coverage in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled at this new partnership,” said Meg Reid, director of Hub City Press. “Charles Frazier has long been one of the South’s greatest writers, as well as one of Hub City’s most ardent supporters. This series will be vital in helping us continue our mission to find and champion the finest fiction the South has to offer.”

The first three books in the series will be “The Magnetic Girl” by Jessica Handler of Atlanta, GA (April 2019), “Watershed” by Mark Barr of Little Rock, AR (October 2019), and “The Prettiest Star” by Carter Sickels of Lexington, KY (April 2020).

“Finding an audience has never been easy for writers of literary fiction,” Frazier said, “so in working with Hub City, my hope is to help amplify distinctive Southern voices and connect them with curious readers.”

Cold Mountain funds primarily will be targeted for more substantial book advances and for book marketing.

Hub City Press titles are distributed by Publishers Group West. Among its published authors are Leesa Cross-Smith, Ron Rash, Michel Stone, Julia Franks, Ashley Jones and others. Hub City annually sponsors the $10,000 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize (judged this year by Lauren Groff), the biennial New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and the biennial South Carolina Novel Prize.

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Check out the new ban at your local library

Expressing concern over the rising number of non-reports, County of K Mayor TB recently issued an executive order banning all sex offenders from public libraries.

Plans are underway to compare a list of registered sex offenders to the libraries 150,000 active cardholders, who would then be notified to stay away from the libraries. When asked about those offenders who don’t have library cards, or who may be homeless and can’t get a card because they don’t have an address, the mayor had no immediate response.

“I just don’t want them anywhere around our kids,” TB said. “The ultimate decision is how we pursue it.”

When asked where these offenders could go, TB said the local bookstores. They already handle banned books. Why not banned people, too?

A manager at a local bookstore, who asked not to be identified, responded that this was “another example of an unfunded government mandate.”

A library worker, when asked how she would identify a sex offended, said she didn’t know how she would identify a sex offender. “It’s not like they come up and self-identify.”

Under a new state law sex offenders can be banned from libraries and such identification could lead to jail time, which would simply lead to more overcrowding, which the County of K already has a problem with. Still, the County of K Mayor felt he needed to get out in front of this issue and issued the first such executive order for any of the major library systems of the state. As a Republican, you can never have enough moral government, he was heard to say. And it usually doesn’t cost much.

County of K sheriff of nodding ham, J Triple said, “I applaud the state of Tennessee for putting tougher regulations on these dirt bags who prey on our children.”

When asked about enforcement, J Triple said with cooler weather coming on, he plans to provide free sweaters to those sex offenders, many of whom may be homeless. The sweaters would have the scarlet letters “D-B” stitched into them in a way that his deputies, using infra-red night scopes on their rifles, will be able to easily see on the chests of the offenders. All the deputy will have to do, Triple J said, is point his rifle at the library entrance and he (or she) will spot the registered sex offender. An arrest would then ensue.

When asked what happens once the sweaters start getting swapped, worn by the wrong person, or even show up on Salvation Army Thrift Store shelves, Triple J grunted that he would let the courts sort that out. Innocent dirt bags were not his concern.

In a somewhat related issue, on the same day as Mayor TB announced his ban, County of K Commissioner AE (Always Embroiled in controversy to her close friends), announced that she had a benign tumor removed from her parathyroid gland. Though the symptoms of the tumor were fatigue, pain, fluctuating blood pressure, and insomnia – not untypical symptoms for any County of K Commissioner these days, she was glad the cause of her distress had been found and treated. Recovery time could take two or three months. When asked about the recent ban of sex offenders from libraries, AE reportedly muttered, she could only hope there was a similar tumor at the top of country government.

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While out for dinner this evening…

A social observation occurred to me when a young boy, probably four or five, returned to his dinner table and made an announcement.

My observation, based on the young man’s announcement is this: up until the age of eight it is socially acceptable to come out of a public rest room and announce to family, friends, and bystanders alike that you just went pee or poop. It is also socially acceptable to make the same pronouncement in the same social situation when you are above 80 years old. Any age in between it is not de rigueur to speak or your derriere in a public place like a restaurant.

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