This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online. The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Three writers talk about how they spend their days and what they see as the art of their lives. The event will include a short reading by each writer on a day in the life of one of their characters, as well as an audience Q&A.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can't attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.
If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop's. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
At nine years old, on her first visit to a museum, Emily fell in love with breakfast, a painting by Henri Matisse. Now a single mother, she lives in the world of art and can barely find time for her two daughters, much less for mark, the man she loves. Her days are a jumble-she's lost the thread of her life-but a contest at the museum where she's the registrar gives her hope-the chance to see breakfast again. Matisse's words and paintings permeate her days and nights, and glancing at a note card of the painting she loves, she sees something she's never seen before. The Art of Her Life shows the power of art to transform an ordinary life.
Cynthia Newberry Martin’s third novel, The Art of Her Life, was published in June, 2023. She's also the editor of the How We Spend Our Days series, more than a decade of essays by writers on their lives, available on her website and as of 2023 also on Substack. As part of the series, she featured Heather Newton on August 1, 2011 and Abigail DeWitt on July 1, 2020. Cynthia grew up in Atlanta and now lives in Columbus, Georgia, with her husband, and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a little house by the water.
Abigail DeWitt is the author of three novels: Lili (WW Norton), Dogs (Lorimer Press), and News of Our Loved Ones. Her short fiction has appeared in Five Points, Witness, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has been cited in Best American Short Stories, nominated for a Pushcart, and has received grants and fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, the McColl Center for the Arts, and the Michener Society.
Heather Newton’s short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House 2022) was the finalist for the W.S. Porter prize. Her novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters (Turner Publishing July 2022) has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television. Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and named an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. A practicing attorney, she teaches creative writing for UNC-Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and is co-founder and Program Manager for the Flatiron Writers Room writers’ center in Asheville.
