It’s our pleasure to welcome Ed Southern to Wonderland Book Club on Friday, May 26, 2023! Ed will present his book, “Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South.”
We start at 10:15 a.m. (Quail Ridge Books opens at 10 a.m.) and will end by noon with a group photo (be sure to stick around for that!).
Ed’s book, Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South, is available for a Quail Ridge Books discount.
All Wonderland news is available at the Wonderland Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/WonderlandBookClub. We’ll continue to send two monthly NCWN/Wonderland Book Club emails.
Please RSVP on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WonderlandBookClub so Quail Ridge has a good count.
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Please invite your friends to come to this meeting. Mention that it’s free and they don’t have to be a member of the NC Writers’ Network or Wonderland Book Club to join us–we welcome all interested folks!
Meet Ed Southern, author of “Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South,” at Wonderland Book Club
co-sponsored by the NC Writers’ Network
Location: Quail Ridge Books
4209-100 Lassiter Mill Rd · Raleigh, NC
Friday, May 26, 2023
Time: 10:15 a.m. to noon (Quail Ridge Books opens at 10 AM), FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
MASKS ARE OPTIONAL~ Quail Ridge Books no longer requires masks.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South
Ed Southern, lifelong fan of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, the smallest school in the NCAA’s Power 5, set out to tell the story of how he got tangled, in vines of history and happenstance, with the two giants of his favorite sport: the Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. He set out to tell how the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, from beyond the grave, introduced him to his wife, a Birmingham native and die-hard Alabama fan.
While he was writing that story, though, 2020 came along.
Suddenly his questions had a new and urgent focus: Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have the South’s histories shaped its fervor for college sports? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances? If college sports really do mean so much in the South, then why didn’t everyone down south wear masks or recognize that Black Lives Matter, even after the coaches told them to?
Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the virtues that sports are supposed to teach and the cut-throat business they’ve become; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present and future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ed Southern
Ed Southern is the author of “Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South” (2021, Blair) a finalist for the 2022 Southern Book Prize (no relation). He is also the author of “The Jamestown Adventure, Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas,” and the short story collection “Parlous Angels.” His shorter work, in a variety of genres, has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, storySouth, the North Carolina Literary Review, the NC 10×10 Play Festival, South Writ Large, the Asheville Poetry Review, and Wake Forest Magazine, among others. Since 2008, he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, one of the largest writers’ organizations of its kind in the country. In 2015 he won the Fortner Award for service to the literary arts in North Carolina. He lives in Winston-Salem.