I have written about my excursions out in the community before  and I am still here to tell you it is my FAVORITE part of my job here at Lemuria.  Yes, yes, I still love it when you come in the store and we can have great conversations about books and I can help you find your next read but it is a lot of fun coming to you and seeing you out and about.

I want to tell you about the collaboration that Lemuria and Millsaps College has started up.  Lemuria has always been involved with the Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series but now we have expanded to help out with the Friday Forum Series and the Visiting Writers Series.

Charles Baxter was the first author of the series and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him again.  He walked up with Suzanne Marrs, who promptly introduced us, but I reminded him we had met before.  He had done an event at Lemuria for his novel, Feast of Love, about 12 years ago.  He quickly smiled and remembered that he had done his reading in a bar. (For those who don’t know, Lemuria and Musiquarium worked together for Literary Brews.)

Students, Professors and Jacksonians began swarming in the auditorium and the program began.  Baxter read a unpublished story, “Loyalty,” and laughter ensued.  One suggestion that he made to writers in the crowd was “never throw anything away.”  He then told us that the first 8 pages of this story he had written 16 years ago and recently found it in a old notebook he was looking through.  I found that to be very interesting and passed it along to Ellis, an aspiring writer on staff at Lemuria.  You couldn’t have asked for a better Wednesday afternoon and I hope that you will start taking advantage of these great programs.

All of these events are open to the public, some are free and some are ticketed events. They are all fantastic and there are a lot of people working together to bring them to you.

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