In Durham with Lee Smith and the One Writing Group for Susan Gregg Gilmore's reading at The Regulator Bookshop

The Blue Corn Café in Durham served up delightful Mexican fare as the table of amazingly talented and gift writers shared laughs and the excitement with Susan Gregg Gilmore before one of her readings that evening. I was along for the ride earlier this week.

Beautiful and charming, Lee Smith – yes, author of On Agate Hill, The Last Girls, Saving Grace and Fair and Tender Ladies – is of course, the teacher of all the other published writers at the table. However, Susan Gregg Gilmore can claim the honor of having been Lee’s student first. Lee was Susan’s 7^th grade English teacher at Harpeth Hall in Nashville. And we were all together to celebrate Susan’s reading at The Regulator Bookshop that night during her 25+city book tour.

Pam Duncan, one of the most outrageously funny writers today and author of The Big Beautiful, Plant Life and Moon Women, had everyone in stitches. As much as you do not want her books to end, you also do not want an evening with her to end. A more generous spirit there is not.

It’s easy to see why Lynn York, author of The Sweet Life and The Piano Teacher, is a successful novelist. Her observations and view of the world is delightful and irreverent. I was fortunate to nab a seat next to her. She is as engaging as her books.

Earlier in the day I was at the marvelous McIntyre’s Bookstore in Farrington, NC and was frustrated beyond words at not being able to purchase Virginia Boyd’s most recently completed novel. She had discussed at Southern Festival of Books last fall and I’ve been dying to get my hands on it. It’s a story of two girls who drive across country with dead mother in the car. I learned during dinner that this book hasn’t actually been published yet. But I was able to have her sign her novel that arrived in stores late last year, One Fell Swoop.

Pam Duncan brought Dawn Shamp, who releases her first novel, On Account of Conspicuous Women, next month, set in Roxboro, NC during the 1920s. I can’t wait to read her book as well.

Betsy Alden, known as “one of the founding mothers” of the service-learning movement and a member of the clergy at Duke University, recently was honored upon her retirement by having a prestigious award named for her: the Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Award. She is the photographer behind this picture of the authors (and me). Earlier that day she had squired Susan and me all over the area giving us a tour of the Duke Chapel and taking us to lunch at A Southern Season, one of the most fun “ladies who lunch” spots in North Carolina (if you go, reserve plenty of time to browse in the shop after lunch!).

The only thing that could possibly have made for an even better evening would have been if the only member of the One Writing Group who was missing that night could have joined us, Darnell Arnoult. She rounds out the writing group of Duncan, York and Boyd…all students in one of Lee Smith’s writing classes years ago. Sufficient Grace is her page-turning novel. She now lives in Tennessee, but is an instructor at Duke and throughout the Southeast at various writing conferences and seminars.