For better or worse, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known for not slowing down. Amid health concerns this past summer, she’s embarked on a flurry of public appearances, including a stop at Meredith College to deliver the Lillian Parker Wallace lecture. Meredith students, alumnae, and faculty get first dibs on the free tickets, but any leftover will be offered to the public by lottery starting
September 16. Sep. 23,
In 1994, Mab Segrest published Memoir of a Race Traitor, about her experiences as a lesbian organizing against the far right in North Carolina. Sound like a particularly vital read in 2019? Out of print for more than a decade, the memoir is reissued this month by The New Press; a round of local readings from the Durham author mark the occasion.
Sep. 24, The Regulator Bookshop
In her genre-bending essays, Leslie Jamison is known to take a topic (a feeling, a phenomenon) and deftly refashion it. Previous books The Empathy Exams and The Recovering circumnavigated the ways we experience pain and addiction; her new collection is a deep-dive into longing and obsession. For fans of Maggie Nelson and John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Sep. 26, Flyleaf Books
Last year, both Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey namechecked Tayari Jones’s excellent An American Marriage, making the novel—which centers on an Atlanta couple whose relationship is torn apart by wrongful incarceration—something of a blockbuster. I heard her read in Chapel Hill last year (Jones’s publisher is Algonquin), and she was brilliant: a warm, hilarious, and open reader. Don’t miss this one.
Oct. 18, Durham Arts Council
Chicano-American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca learned to read and write in prison in the early ‘70s; while there, he submitted his first poems to Mother Jones, then edited by Denise Levertov, who has said that Baca has a “transformative vision.” Since then, he has authored more than a dozen poetry collections that traverse the American Southwest and explore community, social justice, and resilience.
Nov. 2, Levin Jewish Community Center
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Correction: This story originally misstated the author of a treatise on North Carolina family law. It is Suzanne Reynolds, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
