Pop-Up Author Glenda Bailey-Mershon

Join us for a Pop-Up with poet Glenda Bailey-Mershon! She’ll be in store with her collection of poems Weaver’s Knot. Come meet Glenda, hear more about her work, and get a copy Saturday morning from 10am to noon!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Weaver’s Knot immerses readers in the lives of textile mill workers, weavers, and needleworkers of Appalachia, and intrigues with the colorful tapestry of ethnic groups who mingle there. We are introduced to a traditional folksinger with a voice “granite rich and husky,” and a Romani poet who beguiles a bored coffeehouse audience with Manouche jazz. “Everything’s a song,” she says. “Mountain girls” skat, dance to rain drumming on city roofs, and sass strangers who try to seduce with cock-eyed complements. Here mountains settle around one’s shoulders like a familiar shawl, sacred streams flow with prayers, and grandmothers four generations removed sing echoing lullabies. Here also one finds love for humanity––”cunningly organized particles”—and devotion to the mountain “landscapes dipped in honey.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glenda Bailey-Mershon grew up at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, among a textile-mill working and farming family with diverse roots. She lived for years in Chicago and Florida, and now has a home again in the Carolinas. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including most recently Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology (Butcher’s Dog, UK). She is also the author of Eve’s Garden, a novel about three generations of Romani women (Twisted Road). Her previous poetry publications include the chapbooks sa-co-ni-ge/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians (Jane’s Stories); and Bird Talk (Wild Dove). She also edited four anthologies by women writers under the auspices of Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, which she co-founded.