Writers Can Read

This month’s Writers Can Read series will feature the novelists Valerie Nieman and Joy Callaway. The event is free and open to the public and will take place on Monday, September 19 at 7 P.M. in Heritage Station at 210 11th Street in downtown Huntington.

Valerie Nieman’s new novel In the Lonely Backwater, set in rural North Carolina, is being called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” To the Bones, a folk horror/mystery set in coal country, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining three earlier novels. She’s also published a short fiction collection and three poetry books, the most recent being Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has held state and NEA fellowships and is professor emeritus of creative writing at NC A&T State University.

Joy Callaway is the author of The Grand Design, The Fifth Avenue Artists Society, and Secret Sisters. She holds a BA in journalism and public relations from Marshall University and an MMC from the University of South Carolina. She resides in Charlotte, NC with her husband, John, and her children, Alevia and John.

The “Writers Can Read” open mic night reading series takes place on the third Monday of each month (all year) from 7:00-8:30 in Heritage Station at 210 11th Street in downtown Huntington, West Virginia. The event features two award-winning, published authors that serve as “featured readers” to begin the event each month. Previous featured readers have included: Marc Harshman, Denise Giardina, Crystal Wilkinson, Jonathan Corcoran, Doug Van Gundy, Robert Gipe, Nick White, and others. Afterwards, the mic is open to anyone in the audience that would like to share a creative work