Appalbookworm.com

NEWS

 

February 2, 2007

 

Flashes Of The Other World by Julie Ann Shapiro Available

Award winning fiction author Julie Ann Shapiro announces the release of her new digital short story collection, Flashes of the Other World from Pulp Bits.com.

Flashes of the Other World is a quirky collection where magic realism, traumas and the absurd meet. From talking spirits to wine bottles and dimes that have their say it’s one wild, surreal world.

Relationships are spun on their sides as characters delve into the murk of life and grapple with their pain, obsessions and sanity.

While ebooks have taken businesses by storm they’ve been a bit slower to receive recognition in the literary circles. All this is changing as major book publishers launch ebook divisions. It may well be the wave of the future for literary, character driven story collections and a vehicle for authors to tap into and nurture a growing reader base.

Julie Ann Shapiro is a colorful and gutsy writer with over thirty five stories published. She won First Prize in the AuthorStore’s 2006 Best Little Christmas Story Contest.  Her story, “Bio Clock and Nutty Photos" received recognition in Story South's Million Writers Award, Notable Stories of 2004.  Julie has long recognized the power of the Internet, where she is vastly published both as a fiction writer and as a freelance writer. For more information visit her link on the Books and Links page.

 

October 23, 2006

 

Publication date changed for PRECIOUS BLOOD

PRECIOUS BLOOD, a new true-crime book by Sam Adams, will be published in April 2007 by Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

The book recounts the 2002 murders of a Whitesburg, Kentucky, man and his four-year-old son, and the effect on the tiny, close-knit community.

The book's publication date had been set for May, but was moved up by the publisher.

PRECIOUS BLOOD will be available at bookstores nationwide and online. For more information visit my blog.

 

 

August 25, 2006

 

Publication Date Set for PRECIOUS BLOOD

PRECIOUS BLOOD, a new true-crime book by Sam Adams, will be published in May 2007 by Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

The book recounts the 2002 murders of a Whitesburg, Kentucky, man and his four-year-old son, and the effect on the tiny, close-knit community.

PRECIOUS BLOOD will be available at bookstores nationwide and online. For more information visit my blog..

 

June 14, 2006

 

Historic district approved

The Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board has approved the Letcher County Tourism Commission's nomination of a historic district in downtown Whitesburg.

The review board met in Whitesburg June 14 to consider nine nominations from around the state. The Whitesburg nomination was approved unanimously. The National Park Service is now considering the nomination and will report back by the end of September.

If approved, more than 120 properties in downtown Whitesburg will be designated as part of a Certified Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition to appealing to tourists, the move is expected to make the downtown area an attractive location for businesses which can receive large federal and state tax credits for restoring historic buildings.

 

December 27, 2005

 

Kensington Publishing Corp. signs Sam Adams

Peter Miller, President of PMA Literary & Film Management, Inc. is pleased to announce the placement of Sam Adams’ as yet untitled, true-crime book to Michaela Hamilton at Kensington Publishing.

 

Whitesburg, Kentucky, is a friendly little town cuddled up against the northern slope of Pine Mountain.  According to the welcome sign, it is home to 1,599 friendly people and only one grouch.

In a town where everyone knows everybody else, where doors, windows, and lives are kept unlocked and un-curtained, and family relationships and histories are discussed as openly as the daily news, a young girl gets caught up in her husband’s plot to rob and murder an acquaintance. When the crime goes down, the man’s four-year-old son—known and adored throughout the town—is shot and killed.

This is not your typical, modern-day “Bonnie and Clyde” story. This is a story riddled with misguided swipes at the American Dream, buried hopes, and blind, unconditional loves; loves that, had they come with certain conditions, might not have destroyed lives and marred a quiet community’s peace of mind. 

It is a story that hits chillingly close to home. This is blue collar America, where hard work, honesty and family are valued above all else. These could be the people who live down the street from you. These could be members of your own family, or your friends’ families. This town could be your town.

Sam Adams, a life-long journalist and photographer, has worked as a general assignment reporter at The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, an investigative reporter at The Daily Independent in Ashland, Kentucky, (then owned by the Wall Street Journal) and assistant city editor at The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, a little sister of the Dallas Morning News.

He now makes his home in his native county in the mountains of Kentucky, where he works as a grant writer, freelance writer, and teacher  

 

July 30, 2005

 

Frank X. Walker to read at The Beatnik Cafe

Artist, author and poet Frank X. Walker will speak August19 at the Harry M. Caudill Memorial Library in Whitesburg.

Walker, a Danville native, has been a speaker and exhibitor at more than 250 conferences and universities nationwide, and in Northern Ireland and Cuba. He will be in Whitesburg for the library district’s Project WRITE. He will read at 6:30 p.m. August 19 at The Beatnik Café at the library. Local residents are encouraged to attend and read their own works at the event. Writers ages 13 and up are encouraged to participate.

Walker is the author of Affrilachia, a book of poetry about growing up black in rural America, and is a founding member of Affrilachian Poets, an ensemble of African American writers formed to challenge the idea that all Appalachians are white.  His book Buffalo Dance, written from the point of view of York, the slave who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition, was published last year. It won the Lillian Smith Book Award, which honors authors who, “through their writing, carry on Smith's legacy of elucidating the condition of racial and social inequity and proposing a vision of justice and human understanding.”

His latest book, Black Box, is due out this spring. Walker is also editor of Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium and a contributing writer to Ace Weekly.

Affrilachia has been adapted into a play by the University of Kentucky Theater Department. Walker’s work has also appeared in The Appalachian Journal, Limestone, Roundtable, My Brothers Keeper, Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art.

Walker has been founder/Executive Director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, Program Coordinator of the University of Kentucky’s King Cultural Center, the Assistant Director of Purdue University’s Black Cultural Center, vice president of the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and executive director of the Governor’s School for the Arts. He is currently an assistant professor of English and Interim Director of the African/African-American studies program at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.

The Beatnik Café is a reading and speaking forum intended to expose teens to a variety of successful Kentucky writers and encourage them to write. It is part of the Letcher County Library District’s Project WRITE (Writing and Reading Instructs Teens and Entertains), and is paid for by a grant from Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. The events are free and open to the public. Walker’s appearance in Whitesburg is paid for by a Speakers Bureau grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council.

For more information, contact the library at 633-7547, or visit the following sites on the Internet: www.lcld.org; www.appalbookworm.com; or www.frankxwalker.com.

Walker had been scheduled to appear May 20, but the event was cancelled because of a family emergency.

 

 

July 30, 2005

 

Heritage Council revises preservation scope

      The Kentucky Heritage Council has revised the scope of work for a historic preservation grant originally aimed at studying historic stonework in Letcher County, Ky.

 

      The Council has narrowed the survey area to downtown Whitesburg, Ky., and the Collins-Harvey Addition, a residential area popularly known as The Upper Bottom.

 

      A consultant is slated to be hired August 8 to survey the areas and nominate a National Register Historic District in Whitesburg. The grant is a result of an application written by Appalbookworm.com, which will also administer the project locally for the Letcher County Convention and Tourism Commission.

 

 

May 10, 2005

 

Tourism Commission to study historic stonework

The Kentucky Heritage Council will award a Historic Preservation Survey and Planning Grant to the Letcher County (Ky.) Convention and Tourism Commission to catalog immigrant stonework in the area and make nominations to the National Register of Historic Places.

Names such as Palumbo, Mongiardo, Romeo, Codespoti and others filled the manifests of ships landing at Ellis Island in the early years of the 20^th century. The men who owned those names came from Calabria and Sicily and Umbria, from ancient stone churches and terraced mountains and rock-strewn beaches. With as little as $20 in their pockets, they left the ships and boarded trains headed west, for jobs promised or imagined, for new lives foretold in letters from relatives who had gone before.

When northern industrialists began seeking laborers to build railroads into the heart of eastern Kentucky, some of these immigrants’ skills as stone masons made them valuable workers. They carved bridges and tunnels from solid rock, leading the rails rather than following them into the mountains.  When they reached Letcher County, so much like their own home in the Apennines, they built their own Little Italy in the Appalachians. Their chisels left a lasting mark on the landscape of towns like Whitesburg and Jenkins.

Appalbookworm.com wrote the grant application and will assist the tourism commission in hiring a historic preservation consultant and in completing the project.

 

 

January 04,2005

 

Well known authors to read at The Beatnik Cafe

    Several Kentucky authors have signed on to read at The Beatnik Cafe at the Harry M. Caudill Memorial Library in Whitesburg, Ky.

    David Dick, author of Jesse Stuart: The Heritage, Scourges of Heaven and others will read at 7 p.m. January 21. Dick, a retired journalist, won an Emmy Award as a correspondent for CBS News. He and his wife, Lalie Dick, co-authored the acclaimed Rivers of Kentucky.

    Kedrick Sanders, a lifelong student of Appalachian culture and author of High as a Cat's Back, Low as a Snake's Belly and Tall Tales and Short Stories, will read on February 18.

    Nancy Kelly Allen, author of Once Upon a Dime and On the Banks of the Amazon, will read March 18.

   Details will be announced as the dates approach.

 

 

August 31, 2004

 

Libraries to offer writing seminars, public readings

Teenage writers will be able to get help with their work and the chance to present that work to the public during what Kentucky State Librarian James A. Nelson calls “a very ambitious and innovative project” at the Harry M. Caudill Memorial Library in Whitesburg.

Over the next year, Appalbookworm.com will teach writing workshops for teens and conduct public readings at the library. The project, called Letcher County WRITE, is made possible by a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives.

Sam Adams, Appalbookworm’s editor, will conduct the writing workshops once a month for six months. Subjects will include poetry, creative writing, news writing, and public presentation. Readings will be held once a month for a year.

Lina Tidal, director of the Letcher County Library District, said the project is the latest in a series of efforts by the library district to attract more people and provide more services. She said Letcher County WRITE will have a positive impact on literacy and on teens’ ability to speak before groups.

“We will be really, really glad to reach young adults because they don’t come to the library anymore,” Tidal said.  “This will help them even when they go to college.”

The readings, called Beatnik Cafes, are unique opportunities for teens to speak before live audiences.  Appalbookworm has conducted Beatnik Cafes at various locations over the past year, including Appalshop, a multi-media arts center in Whitesburg, and the Appalachian Teen Leaders (ATL) Conference in Louisville, Ky.

Jeremy Smith, Youth Programs Coordinator for Save the Children’s Appalachian Area Office, said the program at the ATL Conference was “incredibly beneficial.”

“While obviously improving the literacy skills of our Appalachian youth through an all too infrequent exposure to words, the Beatnik Café also provides an often equally absent opportunity to vent their feelings and frustrations in a constructive way,” Smith said.

Letcher County WRITE is in keeping with the philosophy of Letcher County author Harry M. Caudill, for whom the library is named. A quotation by Caudill which hangs in the library says, “A really good library would have tremendous impact on child development and we might even make great readers out of many.”

The schedule for Letcher County WRITE will be announced in mid- to late September. For more information call the library at 633-7547 or visit www.lcld.org or www.appalbookworm.com on the Internet.

 

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