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During the first week of September, Special Collections will host appearances by two authors who have featured rare books, manuscripts, and libraries in their bestselling works of fiction. Book signings will follow each talk.  Both events are free and open to the public, and both will take place in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room on the 6th floor of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library.

On Wednesday, September 4 at 3:30 p.m., Charlie Lovett will talk about his new novel, The Bookman’s Tale. In this story of bookish intrigue, the young Peter Byerly, becomes fascinated by the rare books world while working as a student assistant in the special collections department at his North Carolina college. Peter later becomes a rare-books dealer and comes upon a mysterious publication that may put to rest the Shakespeare authorship controversy once and for all.

Charlie is the son of Wake Forest Professor Emeritus Robert Lovett, and the Z. Smith Reynolds Library rare books collection and special collections reading room were an inspiration for his novel.

On Friday, September 6 at 3:00 p.m. we will host Deborah Harkness, author of the hugely popular All Souls trilogy.  Deborah is a featured author at the 9th annual Bookmarks Festival of Books, a free event happening in downtown Winston-Salem on Saturday, September 7. Her Wake Forest appearance is co-sponsored by Bookmarks and ZSR Library as part of the Bookmarks Authors in Schools program.

Deborah’s novels combine literature and history with a supernatural world of witches, vampires, and daemons who coexist warily with humans and with each other. A Discovery of Witches, the first book in the trilogy, introduced Diana Bishop, a history professor and reluctant witch, who discovers a mysterious alchemical manuscript while doing research in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. In Shadow of Night, Diana and her vampire cohort Matthew time-travel to Elizabethan England in an attempt to track down the origin and meaning of the manuscript.

A new exhibit will also be on view in the Special Collections Reading Room. Entitled Books in Fiction, it showcases some of the authors and books featured in Charlie Lovett and Deborah Harkness’s novels.

For more information, contact Megan Mulder at 336-758-5091 or mulder@wfu.edu.