Join us at 6:30pm on January 22nd for our first event of 2018! Readings will start at 7pm, followed by a Q&A, books by Watchung Booksellers, and as always, delicious coffee and treats from the Red Eye Cafe. We can't wait to hear Kim Coleman Foote, Evie Shockley, Bud Smith, and Nancy Star share their words! 

Kim Coleman Foote is a writer of fiction, essays, and experimental prose. In addition to a 2015 NYFA Fellowship in fiction and a 2014 NEA Literature Fellowship, she has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, Illinois Arts Council, and elsewhere. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Obsidian, Black Renaissance Noire, Crab Orchard Review, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel about the trans-Atlantic slave trade and a story collection fictionalizing her family's experience of the Great Migration from Alabama to New Jersey. She lives in Brooklyn.

Evie Shockley is the author of the new black, for which she won the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, and the recently released semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2017), among other collections of poetry.  She has also published a critical study, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry.  Her poetry and essays appear widely in journals and anthologies. Her honors include the 2015 Stephen Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize.  Currently serving as creative editor for Feminist Studies, Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

Bud Smith is a graduate of Central Regional High School. 

Nancy Star is the author of five novels, including her most recent, Sisters One, Two, Three, an emotionally gripping portrait of a family fractured by secrets. Published by Lake Union, the novel made Publishers Weekly’s “Top Ten Print Book and Amazon Kindle Bestsellers of 2016”. Nancy’s previous books include a scathing comic novel, Carpool Diem, two mysteries, Up Next and Now This, and a psychological suspense novel, Buried Lives. Nancy is also an essayist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Money and Family Circle.

Before turning to writing fiction full time, Nancy was a movie executive for the Samuel Goldwyn Company. Working in New York and London, she collaborated with writers and directors on original material, scouted for books and plays for adaptation, and acquired independent films for release.

Nancy lives with her husband, Larry, in Montclair, the town in which they raised their two wonderful daughters and where Nancy has had the good fortune to find a community of talented, hard-working and supportive writers. You can follow her on Twitter @NancyStarAuthor and Instagram, @nancystarauthor or visit her at nancystarauthor.com and on Facebook Nancy.Star.Author

Photo credits

Evie Shockley: Nancy Crampton

Nancy Star: Nina Subin