Kate McKean & Joy Callaway: Write Through It and Sing Me Home to Carolina

Join us at Hub City Bookshop on June 16th at 6 pm for an exciting event where we dive into the heart of small-town romance with Joy Callaway, author of Sing me Home to Carolina, and the emotional rollercoaster of writing with Kate McKean, author of Write Through It. Whether you’re a fan of sweet love stories like Mountain View or navigating the ups and downs of your writing journey, this event is packed with insights, laughs, and a lot of heart. Don’t miss out on a lively discussion that blends love, passion, and the real challenges of becoming an author!

Get a 10% discount on the book when you RSVP on Eventbrite and present it at the bookshop register!

A small town girl turned big city businesswoman returns home to help her parents, only to find her heart being tugged between her old flame and the town’s mysterious new guy.
This witty and effervescent novel is perfect for readers of Viola Shipman and fans of Sweet Magnolias and Hart of Dixie.

Event planner Hattie Norwood only came back home to Mountain View, South Carolina to support her parents as they receive word that the family peanut farm is infertile. This news doesn’t come as a surprise to Hattie, and she plans to return to Charlotte at the weekend’s end.

But then the town councilwoman begs Hattie to use her event planning prowess to help Mountain View put on a musical benefit to stop the construction of the new Carolina Panthers stadium—a project Hattie is actually in favor of, much to the dismay of the locals—and she finds herself agreeing to stay until the town’s Founder’s Day celebration a week later, just as her old flame, former MLB standout Lee Lockhardt, materializes in town after a career-ending injury.

When the hunky and mysterious new owner of Fox’s Hardware, Fox Ryan, suggests the Founder’s Day celebration be moved to the Norwoods’ barn in an attempt to reinvent the failing farm as a music and event venue, Hattie agrees, unaware this move will thrust the town, her love life, and the brewing tension over the stadium into a very public spotlight.

Fans of small-town romance and quirky casts of characters will be rooting for Team Lee or Team Fox as Hattie decides if love, like most music, is meant to fade or last forever.

Discover what every new and aspiring author needs to know about the publishing industry and how to navigate all the complicated feelings that come with writing a book in this no-nonsense guide from literary agent, author, and creator of the popular newsletter Agents & Books Kate McKean.

Writers all want the secret to getting published: the magic formula for a query letter, the list of agents who will instantly say yes, and the perfect marketing campaign to hit “The List.” But writing is about so much more than the intellectual act of putting pen to paper—writers also deserve reassurance that the emotional highs and lows of writing is a normal, valid part of the process. And it might seem easier to focus on the nuts and bolts of writing books—word counts, query letters, and author platforms—than the messy feelings that accompany writing like doubt, fear, and hope, but the two things are inextricably linked.

Write Through It is a candid, actionable guide to navigating the rollercoaster ride of writing and publishing, both on and off the page. Literary agent and author Kate McKean has been educating authors and demystifying publishing for years in her popular newsletter Agents & Books, and now, in these pages, she walks writers of all genres through every stage of the writing and publishing process and its accompanying emotional moments. From the uncertainty of knowing when you should stop fiddling with your book and start pitching to agents to how to deal with the sting of rejection and the elation (and fear) of getting a book deal, Write Through It covers it all.

Drawing from her own extensive experience, McKean goes beyond the practicalities of writing and publishing to address the less-talked-about emotional side of the journey. This book is a must-read for any writer looking to understand the full spectrum of the writing life.

Joy Callaway is the internationally bestselling author of What the Mountains Remember, All The Pretty Places, The Grand Design, Secret Sisters, and The Fifth Avenue Artists Society. She lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband and two children.

Kate McKean is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, New York. She is also an adjunct professor at New York University and earned her MA in fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Catapult, and elsewhere. She writes the Agents & Books newsletter at KateMcKean.substack.com.

Also check out other Arts events in Spartanburg, Literary Art events in Spartanburg, Fine Arts events in Spartanburg.