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June 6, 2026
Special guest appearance with author Alice Martin
Saturday, June 6, 2022, 11 am – 1:00 pm
Westward Women
By Alice Martin
Author Alice Martin will be in the store signing books and visiting with customers on Saturday, June 6, 2026.
About the Author:
Alice Martin is an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University. She received her PhD in American Literature from Rutgers University. Before returning to academia, she worked in commercial book publishing at Algonquin Books, Writers House LLC, and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Appalachian Heritage, and Lit Hub, amongst others. Westward Women, published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2026, is her debut novel.
About the Book:
For fans of Emma Cline and Emily St. John Mandel, Westward Women is a hypnotic and hopeful debut—part fever dream, part dystopian road trip that claws its way towards a jaw-dropping finale.
“An audacious first novel to set beside Margaret Atwood.” – Joyce Carol Oates
It starts with an itch.
In homes across the country, women ages eighteen to thirty-five begin to slow down.
Tired. Blank. Restless.
Drawn to the Pacific Ocean like it’s calling them home. They abandon their lives—jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever.
At the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable.
Aimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper—known for leading infected women West.
Teenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper’s van.
And Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her.
Nia Imani at The Bookhouse
100 Things to do in Winston-Salem Before You Die
Jeffrey L. Smith received a BA degree in Public Administration from Elon University. In 1986 he returned to
Paul is a Winston-Salem native, a graduate of R.J. Reynolds High School and Wake Forest University, where he got his first taste of the media as an announcer for the student-run station, WAKE Radio. He has earned advanced degrees in liberal arts and journalism/mass communications from Johns Hopkins University and UNC-Chapel Hill. Paul has worked as a journalist for 30 years. Locally he has worked for The High Point Enterprise, the News & Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal. Paul has been affiliated with 88.5 FM WFDD, public radio for the Piedmont and High Country, for the last 10 years. He also currently serves as an adjunct professor of the practice in Journalism at Wake Forest University.