Live Stream: Heather Newton launches McMullen Circle, in conversation with Tessa Fontaine

Image shows a dark red border around a white box containing the text: Heather Newton Launches MCMULLEN CIRCLE, in conversation with Tessa Fontaine. Tuesday, Jan. 18th. 6 PM ET. Virtual. Malaprop’s logo image also shown. Next to the text are photos of both authors and the front cover of the featured book.

UPDATE: This event will be fully virtual. We will not be gathering in the bookstore. Register below to join us live online. 

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. 

To celebrate the upcoming release of her short story collection McMullen Circle, finalist for the W.S. Porter Prize, Heather Newton is hosting a giveaway of fun North Georgia swag! If you pre-order and email proof of purchase to mcmullencircle@gmail.com you’ll be entered to win the gift box! The drawing will take place on November 30, 2021 at noon Eastern time. If you’re the winner Heather will contact you for your U.S. mailing address (sorry, can’t mail it outside of the fifty states).

Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and purchase the authors' 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!


The twelve linked stories in McMullen Circle explore the intertwined lives of faculty families at the McMullen Boarding School in Tonola Falls, Georgia in 1969-70. The school community is isolated and idyllic, yet issues of race and the Vietnam War still intrude. Does heroism require physical prowess, or is there valor in a cafeteria worker enduring a cluttered, needy life with her four young sons, or an elderly librarian caring for her disabled lesbian partner? What does it take for a young African American girl to find the courage to assert her right to attend the all-white private school? The stories in this collection ask what, and who, are the real heroes.

Heather Newton's 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. Her short prose has appeared in Enchanted Conversation Magazine, The Drum, Dirty Spoon, and elsewhere. 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, NC. www.heathernewton.net

Tessa Fontaine's writing has appeared in PANKSeneca ReviewThe RumpusSideshow World, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and is working on a PhD in creative writing at the University of Utah. She also eats fire and charms snakes, among other sideshow feats. She lives in South Carolina. The Electric Woman is her first book.

Event address: 
Virtual event on YouTube
Books: 
McMullen Circle By Heather Newton Cover Image
$17.95
This book is currently on backorder. Please call or email for availability.
ISBN: 9781646030767
Published: Regal House Publishing - January 17th, 2022

Under the Mercy Trees: A Novel By Heather Newton Cover Image
$15.99
ISBN: 9780062001344
Availability: Not Currently On Our Shelves. Usually Ships in 1-5 Days.
Published: Harper Perennial - January 18th, 2011

The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts By Tessa Fontaine Cover Image
$16.00
This book is currently on backorder. Please call or email for availability.
ISBN: 9780374538408
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - May 7th, 2019

$0.00
SKU: x672389
$