Stay Home and Read Books

New and Upcoming Titles by Alumni Authors

By UNC Asheville

March 9^th, 2021

A good new book can take you to worlds unknown, and re-reading old favorites can be like visiting old friends, without having to leave the safety and warmth of your home. With the unpredictable early spring weather still limiting the amount of time we can enjoy outside, you may find yourself spending more time at home in order to stay safe and prevent catching or spreading the COVID virus.

It’s the perfect time to check out these new and upcoming books by a few of our alumni authors (who might literally be your old friends!) and take a reading is that will take you on endless journeys, wherever you are.

Wiley Cash

Forthcoming: When Ghosts Come Home

UNC Asheville’s Writer in Residence Wiley Cash ’00 is set to publish his fourth novel likely in September of this year. The novel—Cash’s first set in Eastern North Carolina—kicks off with a mysterious plane crash and a possible murder. The book explores the relationship between a father and daughter, crime and forgiveness, race and memory.

While you wait: Last Ballad, Land More Kind than Home, This Dark Road to Mercy

Terry Roberts

Forthcoming: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Raven Black

Terry Roberts ’77 is also journeying outside of his usual WNC setting with his new novel, My Mistress’ Eyes Are Raven Black, which will be available July 27. This story takes readers to Ellis Island in 1920 when Stephen Robbins (who readers will recognize from Robert’s novel, A Short Time to Stay Here) is enlisted to help find a young, pregnant Irish woman who has disappeared from the Isolation Hospital on the island.

While you wait: The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival, That Bright Land, A Short Time to Stay Here

Mesha Maren

Forthcoming: Perpetual West

Mesha Maren’s ’12 new novel, Perpetual West, tells the story of a young couple—a Mexican-American man in search of his past, and a West Virginian woman seeking a future—trying to make their home amongst the academic and young leftists in a Mexican border city. This book won’t be published until January 2022, which will give you plenty of time to read interviews with Maren and reviews about her first book, Sugar Run, in Entertainment Weekly, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and the New York Times.

While you wait: Sugar Run

M. Randal O'Wain

Recently Released: Hallelujah Station and Other Stories

M. Randal O’Wain (Matt Owens ’12) published his debut short story collection, Hallelujah Station and Other Stories, in September 2020, introducing readers to a wide and diverse cast of characters struggling with and responding to changes and loss. You can read the titular story here: https://www.zone3press.com/entry/view/hallelujah-station

Also check out: Meander Belt

Jessica Rice-Evans

Jesse Rice-Evans ’13, a queer femme rhetorician and doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center researching intersections of language, disability, and digital culture, published her first full-length collection of poetry on disability and femme identity, The Uninhabitable, in 2019. “These poems give us the gambit of that pain, her pain’s keen inability to forget or forgive, her pain’s queering lexicons,” wrote author Natalie Eilbert. “This is a powerful, dismantling debut.”

Also check out: Honor/Shame

Mason Currey

Recently Released: Daily Rituals: Women at Work

Inspired to write your own story—or pick up a paintbrush, a needle, and thread, a lump of clay? Mason Currey ’02 launched a blog called Daily Routines in 2007, examining how famous artists, scientists, writers, and other interesting people organized their days. The blog ended up going viral and has since been adapted into two books, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, published in 2013, and Daily Rituals: Women at Work, published in 2019. The second Daily Rituals book is “a sequel and a corrective,” Currey said, as the first book featured men more heavily than women.