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When one looks up in the dictionary the term “public servant” Harvey Sloane’s name is the example given. From a commitment to medical patients who lacked access and financial support, to neighborhoods throughout Louisville and Jefferson County who needed basic support for social services and infrastructure support, Harvey Sloane was their advocate. His energy, genuineness and vision for making the Louisville community as good as it could possibly be, made a positive difference in the lives of over 700,000 citizens of Harvey’s adopted hometown. The quality of life for all Louisvillians throughout the 70’s and 80’s was positively impacted by Harvey’s decisiveness, leadership and quality of life values that excited and energized Louisville as never before. The strength of his personality and love of community that he exhibited daily turned Louisville into a vibrant and destination community!

Jay and I truly cherish our 50-year relationship with Harvey and Kathy Sloane. Jay and Harvey shared a commitment and dedication to public service in West Virginia and Kentucky.  Their lives continued on parallel paths as Harvey ran for mayor of Louisville and Jay ran for governor of West Virginia.  We treasure our friendship.  Harvey has had a fascinating life by being truly devoted to others.  He is a unique individual with a fascinating life story.  Harvey has led and exemplary life from which we can all learn.  Jay and I highly recommend this intriguing book.
—Sharon Percy Rockefeller, President and CEO of WETA

When one looks up in the dictionary the term “public servant” Harvey Sloane’s name is the example given. From a commitment to medical patients who lacked access and financial support, to neighborhoods throughout Louisville and Jefferson County who needed basic support for social services and infrastructure support, Harvey Sloane was their advocate. His energy, genuineness and vision for making the Louisville community as good as it could possibly be, made a positive difference in the lives of over 700,000 citizens of Harvey’s adopted hometown. The quality of life for all Louisvillians throughout the 70’s and 80’s was positively impacted by Harvey’s decisiveness, leadership and quality of life values that excited and energized Louisville as never before. The strength of his personality and love of community that he exhibited daily turned Louisville into a vibrant and destination community!
—Jerry Abramson, Louisville Attorney

Harvey Sloane, whom I have know for many years, is a great humanitarian, doctor, and devoted family man. He cares tremendously about people and the human race. His work throughout his life is even deeper with the immense respect he shows his colleagues, his constituents, his patients, and his family. This book clearly depicts a man who has lived a good, full, and fulfilling life.
—Martha Stewart, Businesswoman, Writer, and TV Personality

Riding the Rails is a wonderfully told story of public service at its best. Sloane’s many adventures—from the halls of power in Kentucky to perhaps the grimmest place in Siberia—offer valuable lessons to anyone interested in the greater good. It could hardly be more timely.
—Phil Roosevelt, Editorial Director, Magazine, Barron’s

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Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!

On March 14, 1912, Hillsville, Virginia, native Floyd Allen (1856–1913) was convicted of three criminal charges: assault, maiming, and the rescue of prisoners in custody. What had begun as a scuffle between Allen's nephews over a young woman ended with him being charged as the guilty party after he allegedly hit a deputy in the head with a pistol. When the jury returned with the verdict, Allen stood up and announced, "Gentleman, I ain't a-goin." A gunfight ensued in the crowded courtroom that killed five people and wounded seven others. The state of Virginia put Floyd and Claude Allen to death by electrocution the following spring. More than a century later, the event continues to impact the citizens and communities of the area as local newspapers recirculate the sordid story and give credence to annual public reenactments that continue to negatively impact the national perception of the region.

In this first book-length scholarly review of the Hillsville shoot-out, author Travis A. Rountree examines various media written about and inspired by the event and explains how the incident reinforced the nation's conception of Appalachia through depictions of this sensational moment in history. In all, this book provides an extensive analysis of this historic conflict and reveals a new understanding of the shaping of memories and stories from the event.

Travis A. Rountree is an assistant professor of English at Western Carolina University. His writings have appeared in North Carolina Folklore Journal, Appalachian Journal, Journal of Southern History, and Storytelling in Queer Appalachia: Imagining and Writing the Unspeakable Other.

Rountree has written a timely, nuanced consideration of how we remember and pass on our histories. This book may focus on the Hillsville courthouse shoot-out, but its examination is relevant to any event that makes its way into the cultural imagination. Rountree makes the case that history shapes us, not just because of what happens but because of how those stories get told—and why we tell them the ways that we do.

-Amanda Hayes, Associate Professor of English, Kent State University at Tuscarawas

Until now, serious academic research on the notorious Hillsville shoot-out of 1912 has been sparse. Rountree's work makes an important, worthwhile contribution to the field of Appalachian studies by separating and compartmentalizing the competing, and often contradictory, rhetoric(s) of remembering. Fiercely argued and brilliantly crafted, this book is a must for those interested in rhetoric's connection to Appalachian history.

-Todd D. Snyder, author of The Rhetoric of Appalachian Identity and 12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia

In Hillsville Remembered, Travis A. Rountree examines the public memory of the 'Hillsville Massacre,' a gun battle that left five dead in a courtroom in Carroll County, Virginia, in 1912. Sparked by local politics and personal rivalries, the shoot-out briefly became a national sensation, with newspapers treating the killings as evidence of the supposed backwardness of rural white communities in southern Appalachia. Rountree analyzes multiple representations of the event, from folk ballads to contemporary museum exhibits and a remarkable community play performed in the courtroom where the shootings took place. In vivid detail, he shows how both locals and outsiders have engaged with images of Appalachian violence. These acts of memory have often amplified debilitating stereotypes of the region from the era when Americans first defined Appalachia as Other. Yet, as Rountree demonstrates, when remembering is rooted in community experience, these performances also hold the promise of transcendence and healing.

-Andrew Denson, author of Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory

The link below allows you to purchase the book without additional service fees. The book is also available on the registration page. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your favorite books!

Mobility device access info:

While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.

Register HERE

Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!

No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly—another casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver's career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at work: "No one will protect you, including me." A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver's testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done.

In Gay Poems for Red States, Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver's earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future—for a home—in an often unwelcoming place.

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. has spent his entire life dedicated to student success. He holds degrees in French and English from Morehead State University, where he focused his studies on advocacy for students, particularly first generation, Appalachian, and minoritized students. He began his work in eastern Kentucky, later studying and teaching in France. In 2022, Carver was named Kentucky Teacher of the Year and Ambassador to the Kentucky Department of Education, where he created a platform of inclusion and advocacy for LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and Appalachian students. His work has been published in Kentucky Teacher, Education Week, and EdPost. Carver's story has been featured on NBC, PBS, NPR, and other news outlets.

"I've lived a completely ordinary life, so much that I don't know how to write a transgender or queer or Appalachian story, because I don't feel like I've lived one.... Though, in searching for ways to write myself in my stories, maybe I can find power in this ordinariness."

Raised in southeast Ohio, Stacy Jane Grover would not describe her upbringing as "Appalachian." Appalachia existed farther afield—more rural, more country than the landscape of her hometown.

Grover returned to the places of her childhood to reconcile her identity and experience with the culture and the people who had raised her. She began to reflect on her memories and discovered that group identities like Appalachian and transgender are linked by more than just the stinging brand of social otherness.

In Tar Hollow Trans, Grover explores her transgender experience through common Appalachian cultural traditions. In "Dead Furrows," a death vigil and funeral leads to an investigation of Appalachian funerary rituals and their failure to help Grover cope with the grief of being denied her transness. "Homeplace" threads family interactions with farm animals and Grover's coming out journey, illuminating the disturbing parallels between the American Veterinary Association's guidelines for ethical euthanasia and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's guidelines for transgender care.

Together, her essays write transgender experience into broader cultural narratives beyond transition and interrogate the failures of concepts such as memory, metaphor, heritage, and tradition. Tar Hollow Trans investigates the ways the labels of transgender and Appalachian have been created and understood and reckons with the ways the ever-becoming transgender self, like a stigmatized region, can find new spaces of growth.

Stacy Jane Grover is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and holds an MA in women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Tar Hollow Trans: Essays is her first book.

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Please note:

You can order the book on the registration page with convenience service fees. The book is also linked below, available at stores, and at the venue before the event without additional charges.

Mobility device access info:

While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.

Masks are strongly encouraged to help actively include immuno-vulnerable friends and those around them. Thanks!

Register HERE

Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!

Lynnell Edwards’ most recent collection of poetry is This Great Green Valley (Broadstone Books, 2020), a chapbook of documentary poetry based on revisionist narratives of Kentucky’s pioneer founding in the 18th century. Her forthcoming collection, The Bearable Slant of Light is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2024 and explores the impact of mental illness on the family. Three additional full-length poetry collections, Covet, The Highwayman’s Wife, and The Farmer’s Daughter, were published by Red Hen Press. A chapbook, Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop, chronicles the work and art of a glass-blowing studio. Her short fiction, book reviews, and essays have appeared widely. She serves as associate programs director and faculty in poetry for the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. Her work often investigates the deep connections between a people and their place, including the natural, political, and family narratives in its history. Visit Edwards' website.

John James is the author of The Milk Hours (Milkweed, 2019), selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, as well as two chapbooks, most recently Winter, Glossolalia, released in 2022 from London's Black Spring Press Group. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, PEN Poetry Series, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University. He holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia and is completing a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches creative writing at Bellarmine University. 

Kathleen Driskell is an award-winning poet and teacher. She is the author of five books including The Vine Temple, a chapbook title from Carnegie-Mellon University Press, Blue Etiquette: Poems and Next Door to the Dead. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many nationally known literary journals including The New Yorker, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, Rattle and are featured online on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in American Life in Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in What Comes Down to Us: 20 Contemporary Kentucky Poets and The Kentucky Anthology. Past chair of the AWP Board (2019-22), Kathleen is professor of Creative Writing and Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, home of the nationally distinguished low-residency MFA in Writing Program. 

Mobility device access info:

While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.

POSTPONED FROM ORIGINAL DATE. STAY TUNED!

PRECISE DATE AND LOCATION PENDING

Registration details coming soon!

Register HERE

Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!

The untold story of Chicago’s pivotal role as a country and folk music capital.
 
Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major figures like blues legend Muddy Waters, gospel soul icon Mavis Staples, hip-hop firebrand Kanye West, and the jazz-rock band that shares its name with the city. Far less known, however, is the vital role Chicago played in the rise of prewar country music, the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the contemporary offspring of those scenes.

In Country and Midwestern, veteran journalist Mark Guarino tells the epic century-long story of Chicago’s influence on sounds typically associated with regions further south. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and deep archival research, Guarino tells a forgotten story of music, migration, and the ways that rural culture infiltrated urban communities through the radio, the automobile, and the railroad. The Midwest’s biggest city was the place where rural transplants could reinvent themselves and shape their music for the new commercial possibilities the city offered. Years before Nashville emerged as the commercial and spiritual center of country music, major record labels made Chicago their home and recorded legendary figures like Bill Monroe, The Carter Family, and Gene Autry. The National Barn Dance—broadcast from the city’s South Loop starting in 1924—flourished for two decades as the premier country radio show before the Grand Ole Opry. Guarino chronicles the makeshift niche scenes like “Hillbilly Heaven” in Uptown, where thousands of relocated Southerners created their own hardscrabble honky-tonk subculture, as well as the 1960s rise of the Old Town School of Folk Music, which eventually brought national attention to local luminaries like John Prine and Steve Goodman. The story continues through the end of the twentieth century and into the present day, where artists like Jon Langford, The Handsome Family, and Wilco meld contemporary experimentation with country traditions.
 
 Featuring a foreword from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and casting a cross-genre net that stretches from Bob Dylan to punk rock, Country and Midwestern rediscovers a history as sprawling as the Windy City—celebrating the creative spirit that modernized American folk idioms, the colorful characters who took them into new terrain, and the music itself, which is still kicking down doors even today.

Mark Guarino covers national news and culture from Chicago for the Washington Post, ABC News, the New York Times, and other outlets. He was the Midwest bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years. Visit mark-guarino.com for more information. 

Please note:

You can order the book on the registration page with convenience service fees. The book is also linked below, available at stores, and at the venue before the event without additional charges.

Mobility device access info:

While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.