Sheryl Monks

Good friend and fellow Queens MFA grad Jessica Handler will be visiting a great local bookstore in Kernersville. Jessica is the author of the memoir Invisible Sisters, the compelling story of a girl who must navigate the loss of her two sisters before she can discover herself.

Publisher's Weekly calls the book a "clear-eyed, candid work [that] portrays the immense emotional toll that two daughters' illnesses take on a family living in Atlanta."

Jessica will be reading from Invisible Sisters at Shakespeare & Co. on Saturday, June 6, at 1:00 pm. Please, please join us. You'll be so glad you did!

For more info., visit www.shakespeareainkernersville.com or www.jessicahandler.com.

Before I leave for Paris, I'm doing a six-week writing blitz. Author Patry Francis over at Toil, Solitude, Prayer has been inspiring me with her 100 Days of Discipline advice. I'm hoping to get a 60 page novelette (a condensed version of the novel I'm working on) finished, which I can begin expanding in August. So if I don't answer your emails, it's only because I'm training for a marathon.

I finally finished grading student portfolios for my creative writing class at Salem. Hallelujah! It's been an exceptionally good semester, but I'm ready for a break. I'm going to Paris in July, and I cannot wait. I'm taking an armload of Thornton Wilder books to read in preparation for my big interview with biographer (more…)

In addition to the novel, I'm working on several other fun new projects. I recently met with Susan Lyons, the interim director of the Yadkin County Arts Council, to discuss literary programs in the Yadkin Valley area. She and husband Stephen are leading up a monster capital campaign to raise funds for a new 10,000 square-foot cultural arts center in Yadkinville. The new arts center will house workshops, offices, a theatre, a bookstore, a coffee shop, and artists' studios. It's a dream come true!

I'll be meeting soon with the folks at the Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes to see how I can help with their next literary hop. I'm looking forward to that as well.

I'm also preparing for a big interview with one of my personal literary heroes, biographer Penelope Niven. She is currently working on a biography of Thornton Wilder. I'll be reading as many of Wilder's novels and plays as possible over the coming weeks, and if time permits, I'll share thoughts on them here.