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Pop-Up Author Glenda Bailey-Mershon
April 27 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Join us for a Pop-Up with author Glenda Bailey-Mershon! She’ll be in store with her new collection of poems Weaver’s Knot.
Come meet Bailey, hear more about her work, and get a copy Saturday morning from 10am to noon!
ABOUT THE BOOK
A weaver’s knot is among the finest, strongest single knots used by weavers and seamstresses to repair broken threads in cloth and to bind threads in embroidery. To read this collection is to be immersed in the daily lives of the textile mill workers, traditional weavers, and needleworkers of Appalachia, and to be intrigued by the rich tapestry of ethnic groups who mingled in the region. Here mountains settle around one’s shoulder like a familiar shawl, and grandmothers four generations removed sing echoing lullabies. Among the people introduced by the poet are folksingers with voices “granite rich and husky” and a Romani poet who beguiles a bored coffeehouse audience with Manouche jazz. “Everything’s a song,” she says, and this collection teems with music and audacity. “Mountain girls” skat, dance to rain drumming on city roofs, and sass strangers who try to seduce them with cock-eyed compliments. Here also one finds a deep love of humanity—“cunningly organized particles”—a persistent attention to imagery, and most of all, a love of the mountain “landscapes dipped in honey.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glenda Bailey-Mershon grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, among a family of mixed heritage, who worked farms and textile mills. She has been a bobbin threader, a bartender, a university administrator, a bookstore and small press owner, and has taught writing, anthropology, and history, along the way. Her publications include Weaver’s Knot (Finishing Line Press, 2023); the novel Eve’s Garden (Twisted Road, 2014); several short collections; and four volumes as editor of anthologies. Her work has appeared in publications as varied as The Daily Beast and Appalachian Review, and has been frequently anthologized. She founded Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, which offers the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature, and writes the popular Substack newsletter, The Inspiration Shelf.
