Meredith to speak as part of Writers Road Show

The Northwest Regional Library is hosting a Book Tour Event and will be welcoming author Patti Meredith to Mount Airy this weekend.

A part of the library system’s Writers Road Show, Meredith will be speaking about her book ‘South of Heaven’ at Pages Books & Coffee at 192 N. Main Street in Mount Airy from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The library said Meredith is recognized as a book club favorite and is “a natural storyteller. She takes readers to the Sandhills of North Carolina and introduces them to her cast of quirky characters in a family story that will strike a chord and always leads to a delightful conversations.”

A native of Galax, Virginia, Meredith resides with her husband and dog Maggie in Chapel Hill. She received a master’s in fine arts in creative writing from the University of Memphis and her stories have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, and Mulberry Fork Review.

While she has had stories published, she said ‘South of Heaven’ marks her debut as a novelist. After taking creative writing classes during her undergraduate years at Virginia Tech she said of her writing, “I didn’t take myself too seriously.”

She put writing aside until years later when she took an adult continuing education class at Duke University and her professor wrote on the board, “Discipline is remembering what you want.”

That resonated with her, and she took the advice to heart because she knew she wanted to be writer. The advice paid off. “I would go to any writer’s workshop I could and in Memphis I joined a group for adults. The guy who led the group said I should sign up for the masters of fine arts program at the university and I did.”

“I felt really old, but it was so much fun and that’s where some of my stories started to take shape. At another writer’s conference the first character for ‘South of Heaven’ popped up,” she explained.

Maybe she meant to say popped out. “Literally he came out of a bamboo thicket, and I recognized that memory, from Moore County, from Carthage,” where her parents were from, “so that was where my story was set. One character led to another, and the story took shape.”

For 14 years she worked on her book which she said was a little embarrassing. “It’s not ‘War and Peace’, but I got distracted and we moved a lot. But I could never get the story out of my head, I could not stop working on it.”

The pandemic was a mixed blessing she said because many distractions fell away out of necessity. It was during this time she moved for the last time, hopefully, to Chapel Hill which places her in relative proximity to family in Galax and in Carthage.

Meredith said she is excited to come back to visit Mount Airy and recalled that living in Galax, coming down this way was a bit of treat whether it was to see a movie or go to Pizza Hut.

“My favorite thing is to go to a book club and hear people talk about my characters like they are real people. Like they are neighbors living down the street everyone knows,” she said. “And the book gives people things to talk about because it brings up hard things and a lot of human emotions happen on the page.”

Rana Southern, branch manager of the Mount Airy Library, was singing the praises of Meredith’s book. “Patti’s book is a ‘must read’ for lovers of Southern fiction. Once I got started, I couldn’t put it down. Living in a small town makes the book feel real as you can identify with the characters and situations.”

The Writers Road Show tour was created to bring the in-person reader experience to small town libraries and rural audiences, and it will continue for Meredith as she tours the area on Tuesday, May 21, at the Alleghany Public Library from 10:30 a.m. to noon, and at the Charles H. Stone Memorial Library in Pilot Mountain from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 22.