Charles McNair Author Visit

Join Avid Bookshop on Tuesday, September 24, 2013, from 6:30pm - 7:30pm in celebration of Charles McNair's long awaited novel, Pickett's Charge. Charles's first book, Land O'Goshen, was a nominee for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize, and this second book has already received early critical praise from the likes of Charles Frazier, Colum McCann and Tom Franklin.

Charles McNair, a native of the Yellowhammer State of Alabama, currently lives in Atlanta where he writes full-time, combining freelance literary duties with assignments for corporations and businesses, including “Power of Storytelling” workshops. Since 2005, he has served as Books Editor for Paste magazine and shared his reviews on Atlanta radio station WMLB 1690 AM. He is currently at work on his third novel, THE EPICUREANS. Visit Charles online at charlesmcnairauthor.com. 

In addition to writing, he is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine in Atlanta and records a weekly book review for WMLB. You can listen to a number of his reviews here: http://1690wmlb.com/programs/charles-mcnairs-book-reviews/.

Praise for Pickett’s Charge 

“Pickett’s Charge is a genuine delight—a wild, comic, sometimes hallucinatory ride through a century of Southern history.”
— Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain 

“Pickett's Charge is a rousing depiction of William Faulkner's belief that the past is not dead, it's not even past. Charles McNair is a gifted writer.”
— Ron Rash, author of Serena 

"Charles McNair has crammed the whole history of the South into one man's epic lifetime adventure. Pickett's Charge is big and noisy, comic and tragic, 
absurd and profound: a hundred times larger than life. "
— Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama 

“The only trouble with Charles McNair is that HE DOESN'T WRITE BOOKS FAST ENOUGH! It's been far too long since Land O'Goshen but boy have I been happy reading Pickett's Charge. It charges from the get-go and never lets up, filled with so many kick-your-ass sentences and images that I'm lost between admiration and envy. My consolation is that the book is so good it'll make for a lot of rereading, and my hope is that it'll be sooner before his next book comes out.” 
— Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter 

"Charles McNair writes like William Kennedy in full flow, like J. P. Donleavy on a bender, like Donald Hays at a sing-song. I will stack up my favourite writers and bring McNair to the party. "
— Colum McCann, author of TransAtlantic 

“Charles McNair is the mad moonshiner of American fiction. In Pickett’s Charge, he has distilled a century of Southern history into a heady concoction that might not make you blind, but will certainly change the way you see our country.”
— Thomas Mullen, author of The Last Town on Earth 

“Charles McNair is a wizard-like word-slinger, making myths and casting spells that ricochet from hilarity, to horror, to heartbreak.”
— John Holman, author of Luminous Mysteries 

"Just your typical soul-searching, century-spanning Civil War story with all the usual ghosts, scaly monsters, time machines, and crazed monkeys. Spellbinding and raucous, epic and intimate."
— Jack Pendarvis, author of Awesome 

“Pickett’s Charge is not just visionary; it’s a novel of indelible visions. It’s not just an example of American magical realism; it’s a reinvention of the backwoods tall tale, with all its wild humor. And it’s not about the Old South so much as it’s about the Primeval one, brought to the page by a writer whose only rivals in the description of Southern flora and fauna are William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Go with Charles McNair on the dirt-road joyride that is Pickett’s Charge; he’s taking you to a place you’ll never forget, and from which you can never return.”
— Tom Junod, Esquire