Tag Archives: Clarksville

Ripe for the Pickin’ Book Launch March 5, 2022

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Today, my new novel, Ripe for the Pickin’, is out and for sale through all major booksellers! I have worked many years on this book, rewriting it a few times. Reworking it. Taking chances. Waiting for answers. Listening for stories. Checking its pulse. Cultivating experience.

When you step back, you think, “Yeah,” and nod and sense the magic. Okay, it’s ready. Later, you take it in again and wonder, “Did it work out alright?” The creative impulse and familiarity feels as if its traveling away with the work–a stranger when you meet it again.

I’ll meet it again at the book launch and read from the book, sign copies, and look forward to talking with the people who come out.

1-3 p.m. Saturday, 5 March, 2022, at Journey’s Eye Studio in Clarksville, TN.

Here’s the press release about the event:

Local Author Celebrates New Book & 10 Years at Journey’s Eye Studio

Local author and publisher, Shana Thornton’s new book, Ripe for the Pickin’, releases this weekend with a book launch at Journey’s Eye Studio on Saturday, March 5, from 1-3 p.m. Thornton will celebrate ten years in the book business this year. She will read from her work and sign books on Saturday. The event is free and open to the public. Books is be available for purchase,

Set in Tennessee, Thornton’s new novel, Ripe for the Pickin’, received advanced praise from award-winning author Barry Kitterman, who is also a retired Austin Peay State University professor of creative writing: “It’s been a few years since we saw these characters in the first of Shana Thornton’s Poke Sallet stories. This time, as I read the opening pages, I feel like I’m running down a country road holding onto the tailgate of a friend’s pickup, and that friend is Thornton herself. The thought occurs to me that I should not have got out of the pickup in the first place, and would be wise to hang on, to follow wherever she takes me. The story is several stories: a road trip, a food and herb meditation, a hymn to Tennessee, an earth spiritual. There’s the continuation of a treasure hunt, and poetry, and song lyrics, all spanning several generations, at times passing over the threshold from this world to earlier worlds. It’s worth reading, and worth reading twice.”—Barry Kitterman

Thornton has written four fictional novels, including Ripe for the Pickin’, and co-authored a mindfulness journal. She is the series editor and publisher of the yoga book series, BreatheYourOMBalance, which has featured the work of many Clarksville authors and yoga practitioners. This year, Thorncraft Publishing, her publishing company, celebrates ten years in business. Within that time, the company has published the books of local Clarksville authors and/or authors who are Austin Peay graduates. 

Thorncraft Publishing books, including Ripe for the Pickin’, are available for purchase through all major booksellers, including Hudubam (locally), Parnassus Books in Nashville, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound, and Amazon. 

Books will be available for purchase at Journey’s Eye Studio. The author will sign copies at the event on Saturday. Journey’s Eye Studio is the only place in Clarksville to buy autographed copies.

For more information, visit thorncraftpublishing.com

Event: 

Journey’s Eye Studio

Franklin Street

Clarksville, TN

1-3 p.m. Saturday, March 5, 2022.

Book: Ripe for the Pickin’ 

238 pages paperback

Suggested retail price: $17.99

ISBN-13: 978-0-9979687-5-0

Publication date: March 4, 2022

Visit from a Poetry Queen

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I’ve never witnessed an author bring magic and life force like Maya Angelou. The town prepared for weeks and swarmed like bees to honey. It was 1998, and we were waiting for the poetry Queen in a Queen City. She brought her entourage. We watched them wheel through the streets next to campus, guessing. Wondering. She carried a force and promise reminiscent of the great musicians who came down the Cumberland on riverboats headed to Memphis and New Orleans.

I was 22 and on my own pilgrimage as a first-generation college student in Clarksville, and I didn’t know it then, but I would go on to meet and interview authors and work with them now. She spoke with a power that hushed up that packed to the top place. Her beauty emanated from the podium in the Dunn Center gymnasium at Austin Peay State University, enrapturing us to move along with the rhythm of her voice. Rising. I was in the top, a place most people didn’t want to sit. They wanted to be close to her. I could survey those faces, and catch every moment of that voice rising to the rafters. I was so proud of her, of my place, of pursuing my dreams in spite of the challenges.

Her inspiration lifted me and I went on to become the Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper the next year. I held onto her presence on campus. No other author captivated like that, so many people. Some people have the magic of life, and it just drips off them like invisible diamonds that everyone can feel gleaming straight through the heart.