Novel is excited to host a virtual event online to launch Claire Fullerton's latest book! Join us on Zoom as author Susan Cushman will be joining her in conversation to discuss Little Tea on June 18th at 6PM

About the book:

Southern Culture... Old Friendships... Family Tragedy

One phone call from Renny to come home and "see about" the capricious Ava and Celia Wakefield decides to overlook her distressful past in the name of friendship.

For three reflective days at Renny's lake house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, the three childhood friends reunite and examine life, love, marriage, and the ties that bind, even though Celia's personal story has yet to be healed. When the past arrives at the lake house door in the form of her old boyfriend, Celia must revisit the life she'd tried to outrun.

As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family's ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years. Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if friendship can triumph over history.

About Claire Fullerton:

Claire Fullerton hails from Memphis, TN. and now lives in Malibu, CA. with her husband and 3 German shepherds. She is the author of Mourning Dove, a coming of age, Southern family saga set in 1970's Memphis. Mourning Dove is a five-time award winner, including the Literary Classics Words on Wings for Book of the Year, and the Ippy Award silver medal in regional fiction (Southeast). Claire is also the author of Dancing to an Irish Reel, a Readers' Favorite award winner that is set on the west coast of Ireland, where she once lived. Claire's first novel is a paranormal mystery set in two time periods titled, A Portal in Time, set in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She is a contributor to the book, A Southern Season with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, set at a Memphis funeral (because something always goes wrong at a Southern funeral). Little Tea is Claire's 4th novel and is set in the Deep South. It is the story of the bonds of female friendship, healing the past, and outdated racial relations. Little Tea is the August selection of the Pulpwood Queens, a Faulkner Society finalist in the William Wisdom international competition, and on the long list of the Chanticleer Review's Somerset award. She is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Literary Agency. 

About Susan Cushman:

Susan was born in Jackson, Mississippi and went to school at the University of Mississippi. She moved to Memphis in 1988 where she and her husband continued to raise their three children. Fast forward thirty-two years, and they have four granddaughters!

Susan was co-director of the 2013 and 2010 Oxford (Mississippi) Creative Nonfiction Conferences. She was director of the 2011 Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop. She was a panelist at the 2017 Decatur Book Festival, the 2012, 2017, and 2018 Southern Festival of Books, the 2017 and 2018 Mississippi Book Festival, the 2013, 2017, 2018 and 2019 Louisiana Book Festival, the 2018 Mississippi Writers Guild Conference, the 2018 Alabama Writers Conclave Conference, the 2018 Pat Conroy Literary Center Visiting Author Series, the 2019 Southern Literary Festival, and the 2020 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Professionals) annual conference.

Her published books include three she has written: Friends of the Library (short stories), Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Face Alzheimer’s (a memoir), and Cherry Bomb (a novel). She has edited three collections of essays: A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be, Southern Writers Writing, and The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years! In addition she has over a dozen essays published in four anthologies and various journals and magazines.

Much of Susan’s writing is infused with elements of her own life, including the very mystical spirituality of her Orthodox Christian faith and the personal demons she has been chasing since childhood. Her essays, short stories, and novel all reflect what she has learned through many dark nights of the soul, but also contain elements of hope and healing and honor her Southern roots.