Author Jennifer McGaha in conversation with Glenis Redmond

Highland Books is pleased to host a free event with author Jennifer McGaha, in conversation with poet Glenis Redmond, as McGaha presents her new book, The Joy Document: Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight. The event will take place at the Mary C. Jenkins Community Center, 221 Mills Avenue, Brevard, NC, on Thursday, December 5 at 6:30pm.

“Once you begin looking for joy, you can find it pretty much anywhere.”

When Jennifer McGaha’s grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. “Fifty-five,” her grandmother answered, as though there was something magical about this stage of life, some deeper way of knowing from this vantage point. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her.

These observations became Jennifer’s Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention. When you are determined to find joy, almost anything can become revelatory–an Earth Day Whole Foods errand, Claire Saffitz’s fruitcake recipe, a harrowing ride in Twinkly Taxi, an evening picnic at Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8, or cartwheels in the driveway. While many of us at midlife have found all the things we’ve strived for (the career, the better life, the organization tools), those things only go so far. And the search for something greater, something truer, begins. Through this lens, life after fifty becomes not the end or even the middle of life, but a new beginning, another grand adventure with endless opportunities to find joy. The Joy Document includes fifty rollicking and often humorous essays exploring the art of joy and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

Jennifer is the author of three works of creative nonfiction including The Joy Document: Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight, Flat Broke with Two Goats, a 2018 OverDrive Big Library Read, and Bushwhacking: How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out, a Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award finalist. Her nonfiction and creative nonfiction work has also appeared in many magazines and literary journals including Image, The Huffington Post, The New Pioneer, Lumina, PANK, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Brevity, Bitter Southerner, Crab Creek Review, River Teeth, and others, and she has led writing workshops throughout the region and beyond through venues such as Hugo House, Charlotte Lit, Flatiron Writers Room, the North Carolina Arboretum, Story and Song Bistro at Amelia Island, the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site, Kanuga Conference Center, and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville. An Appalachian native, Jennifer lives in a wooded North Carolina hollow with her husband, two cats, four unruly dogs, nine relatively tame dairy goats, and an ever-changing number of chickens.

Glenis Redmond is Greenville, South Carolina’s Inaugural Poet Laureate. She is a Baldwin Fellow 2024-2025 and a Poet Laureate Fellow 2023, selected by the American Academy of Poets. Glenis has published seven books of poetry. Her latest books are The Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press and The Song of Everything: A Poet’s Exploration of South Carolina State Parks. Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2022. Glenis has recently been published in Orion Magazine, Callaloo, American Poets, The New York Times, and the North Carolina Literary Review. The Listening Skin was shortlisted for the Open Pen America and Julie Suk awards. Glenis is the mother of twin daughters, Amber and Celeste, and a Grandmother (Gaga) to Julian, Paisley, and Quinn. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.

The event is free and open to the public. Highland Books will have both author’s books available for purchase, with a signing at the conclusion of the event.

Highland Books is proud to have been Brevard’s indie bookstore since 1975. They are located at 36 W. Main Street in downtown Brevard. Learn more at https://highlandbooksonline.com.