Verse & Vino is the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation’s signature annual fundraiser, and over the past decade this celebration of reading, writing and the joy of libraries – shared with a community of readers and New York Times best-selling authors – has become one of Charlotte’s most anticipated events.
This year, the event details are:
Thursday, November 2, 2023
Crown Ballroom at the Charlotte Convention Center
6:00 pm
Wine and cocktail hour, book sales, and book signings by the authors
7:00 pm
Dinner (menu here) and Program
9:30 pm
Program ends with an opportunity for additional book sales and signings
The 2023 Verse & Vino Line Up
Melanie Benjamin
Melanie Benjamin is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling historical novels The Swans of Fifth Avenue, about Truman Capote and his society swans, The Aviator’s Wife, a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Mistress of the Ritz, based on the true story of the American woman who ran the Ritz during World War II, catering to the Nazi occupiers by day while working for the Resistance by night.
California Golden ~ California—glittering neon nights at Whisky A-Go-Go and endless summer days surfing at Malibu—is the golden backdrop for this stirring saga of two sisters navigating their way through the turbulent 1960s. One sister finds herself swept up in celebrity complete with Beach Boys, parties at The Playboy Club and USO tours to Vietnam; the other, tugged down into the counterculture of drugs and cults. Both of them still grappling with their unorthodox childhood spent trying to keep up with their mother, a legendary female surfer in an era when housewives were expected to be Donna Reed, not Gidget. This gripping tale of ambition, sacrifice and finally, forgiveness, is ultimately an exploration of motherhood, sisterhood and womanhood in a time when society was shifting as tempestuously as the breaking waves.
Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, which was a New York Times bestseller; the novel An Untamed State, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize; the memoir Hunger, which was a New York Times bestseller and received a National Book Critics Circle citation; and the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti. A contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, she has also written for Time, McSweeney’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Bookforum, and Salon. Her fiction has also been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, and other anthologies. She is the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She lives in Lafayette, Indiana, and sometimes Los Angeles.
Sadeqa Johnson
Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of And Then There Was Me, Second House From the Corner, Love in a Carry-on Bag and Yellow Wife. Yellow Wife is a 2022 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy finalist, a BCALA Literary Honoree, and the Library of Virginia’s Literary People’s Choice Award winner.
The House of Eve ~ 1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.
Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parÂents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.
With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
Etaf Rum
Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by Palestinian immigrants. She lives in North Carolina with her two children and owns a coffee shop and bookstore called Books and Beans, named after her Instagram account @booksandbeans. Her first novel, A Woman Is No Man, was a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today book club pick.
Evil Eye ~ Raised in a conservative and emotionally volatile Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur who took her to the suburbs. She’s gotten to follow her dreams, completing an undergraduate degree in Art and landing a good job at the local college. As a traditional wife, she also raises their two school-aged daughters, takes care of the house, and has dinner ready when her husband gets home. With her family balanced with her professional ambitions, Yara knows that her life is infinitely more rewarding than her own mother’s. So why doesn’t it feel like enough?
After her dream of chaperoning a student trip to Europe evaporates and she responds to a colleague’s racist provocation, Yara is put on probation at work and must attend mandatory counseling to keep her position. Her mother blames a family curse for the trouble she’s facing, and while Yara doesn’t really believe in old superstitions, she still finds herself growing increasingly uneasy with her mother’s warning and the possibility of falling victim to the same mistakes.
Shaken to the core by these indictments of her life, Yara finds her carefully constructed world beginning to implode. To save herself, Yara must reckon with the reality that the difficulties of the childhood she thought she left behind have very real—and damaging—implications not just on her own future but that of her daughters.
Brad Taylor
Brad Taylor, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.), is a twenty-one-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Forces, including eight years with Delta Force. Taylor retired in 2010 after serving more than two decades and participating in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has written fifteen New York Times bestsellers and is a security consultant on asymmetric threats for various agencies. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and two daughters.
The Devil’s Ransom ~ Conducting a routine cover development trip to Tajikistan, Pike Logan and Jennifer learn that Afghanistan has fallen, and there’s a man on the run. One that has done more for the United States in Afghanistan than anyone else. Pulled in to extract him, Pike collides headlong into a broader mystery: His covert company, along with every other entity in the Taskforce, has been hit with a ransomware attack, and there’s some connection between the Taliban and the hack. Given the order to track down the perpetrators, he has no idea that the problem set is much, much larger and more dangerous than a simple attack on his organization. That hack was just a test-run, and the real one is coming soon, engendered by a former NSA specialist in the U.S. government.
A man who wants to return to the bipolar world of the Cold War, the turncoat has cloaked his attack behind hackers from Serbia and Russia, and if successful, his target will alter the balance of power on the global stage. So far, the specialist has remained one step ahead of the Taskforce, but he has just made one massive mistake: hitting Pike Logan.
