The Southern Highland Reader

SYLVA–City Lights Bookstore, a retail anchor in downtown Sylva since the early eighties, is changing hands.

Owners Joyce and Allen Moore are selling the store to longtime employee Chris Wilcox, effective January 1.

Moore informed her customers of the change in a letter written on Monday, in which she wrote, in part:

As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world.

The Moores bought the store from local author Gary Carden in 1986, and moved it from Main Street to its current location at the corner of Spring St. and East Jackson St. a few years later.

In her letter, Moore also wrote:

Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes.  Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself.  It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.

Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you.  It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.

Pat Conroy

HIGHLANDS–Pat Conroy’s latest novel — and his first since the mid-nineties — is South Of Broad, which recently reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and is number two on the American Independent Booksellers list.

Conroy wrote a good bit of the book in Highlands, where he and his wife, writer Casandra King, have spent the past few summers.

Conroy’s recent book signing at Cyrano’s Bookshop in Highlands drew an enormous crowd, writes the Macon News’s Mac Isaacs in this feature.

Here’s an excerpt:

Cyrano’s Bookshop, a fixture on Main Street in Highlands since 1978, is one of Conroy’s favorite places as well. And it isn’t just because the establishment sells his books. Conroy tells the story of the first time he came to town. One of the banks here did not recognize him and would not cash his check. So Conroy thought, “Maybe they’ll know who I am at the bookstore.”

“Without question,” Randolph Shaffner, Cyrano’s founder and then owner said. Ever since, Conroy has cashed his checks at Cyrano’s. He refers to Shaffner as his “banker.”

Read the whole piece here.

CULLOWHEE– Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture at Western Carolina University, is winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance book award in the category of fiction for his novel “Serena.”

Rash’s “Serena” has been a critical success since its 2008 release and has catapulted the South Carolina-born author to the forefront of the literary world.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is a regional organization that represents more than 300 independent bookstores and storeowners throughout the Southeast.

Ron Rash

“Serena” is set in pre-Depression-era Appalachia, and tells the story of a timber baron and his ruthless wife who come to the North Carolina mountains to seek their fortune.

In addition to his SIBA award, “Serena” made Rash a finalist for the 2009 Pen/Faulkner Award, was called “one of the best books of the year” by Publishers Weekly, and was Amazon’s No. 7 most sought-after book in 2008.

Critics have praised Rash’s ability to majestically convey the North Carolina backcountry, which is a trademark of his work. The Columbia, S.C., newspaper, The State, praised Rash for his ability to “capture the speech and landscape of the Carolinas with an elegant precision” when commenting on his 2006 novel “The World Made Straight.”

Rash is no stranger to critical acclaim. His 2002 novel “One Foot in Eden” won the Appalachian Writers Association’s Book of the Year award and received a gold medal from ForeWords Magazine for best literary novel.

In April, Rash was a featured speaker at Western Carolina’s Spring Literary Festival. He continues to host readings of his work across the country.

February, 2009

Monthly best-selling regional books, based on the sales of independent booksellers in far-western North Carolina counties. Special thanks in helping pull together this, our inaugural list, to City Lights Bookstore in Sylva and the Curiosity Shop bookstore, with locations in Murphy and Andrews.

1.		Serena Ron Rash
2.		Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains Edit.: Georgann Eubanks
3.		Sylva Edit.: Lynn Hotaling
4.		Ghost Cats of the South Randy Russell
5.		North Carolina Then and Now Kevin Adams
6.		Moon Women Pamela Duncan
7.		History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees James Mooney
8.		The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot Tim Pegram
9.		Trail of Tears: The Rise & Fall of the Cherokee Nation John Ehle
10.		The Fireman’s Wife Jack Riggs

Also receiving votes: Gratitude for Shoes by Cleo Hicks Williams (Self-published through I-Universe),
Promises of Change by Joan Medlicott, Month by Month Gardening in the Carolinas by Bob Polomski, Weird Carolinas by Roger Manley, The Secret War by Terrell Garren, Big Beautiful by Pamela Duncan, Hiwassee; Novel of the Civil War by Charles Price, Over in the Meadow illus. by E.J. Keats, One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash, Trouble at the Forks by Walter Middleton