Authors & Oysters During Downrigging Weekend

The Bookplate is proud to announce that three authors will be coming to town between October 28th & 29th to hold Authors & Oysters events at The Retriever Bar during Sultana’s Downrigging Festival Weekend. All events will be held in the back room of The Retriever. Jacqueline Boulden was featured in the most recent Authors & Oysters event on October 12th with her novel, Her Past Can’t Wait.

On Friday, October 28th at 5:30pm, all are invited to The Retriever to meet author Philip Greene as he discusses his book, To Have and Have Another; A Hemingway Cocktail Companion. “Ernest Hemingway is nearly as famous for his drinking as he is for his writing. Throughout his collected works, Papa’s sensuous explorations of the delights of imbibing engaged both his characters and his readers. Now revised and expanded to include even more authentic recipes, history and folklore, colorful anecdotes, and the drinks themselves, this Hemingway cocktail companion provides an engaging and unique perspective on Papa’s world.

Philip Greene is one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans. He is a sought-after speaker on topics within cocktail history, as well as a mixology consultant for restaurants and institutions across the world. A descendant of the Peychaud family of New Orleans, he counts among his ancestors the illustrious Antoine Peychaud, the nineteenth-century New Orleans pharmacist who created Peychaud’s Bitters and is credited with coining the word “cocktail”.”

“[A] fascinating literary-booze study.” – The Washington Post

“Might be the next best thing to drinking with Hemingway.” – Imbibe

On Saturday, October 29th at 11:00 am, all are again invited to The Retriever to meet author Greg Melville as he discusses his book, Over My Dead Body; Unearthing The Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries. “The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown. Thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the cemetery told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. 

Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the past eras of history but have also shaped them. The book explores how cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles; how they’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson; and how they’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States’ ambition and reach.”

“Melville is an ideal guide, carrying a revealing lantern into both beautiful and disturbing corners of the nation’s undervalued graveyards. At the end of a glorious excursion, he leaves you with a deep appreciation of the rich heritage sleeping just under Americans’ feet. Captivating.”  -Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, bestselling author of The Butchering Art

“Witty, warm, and bristling with fascinating history and firsthand details… Essential-no, vital-reading.” – Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration

Later in the day at 2pm on October 29th, all are invited back to The Retriever to meet writer Peter A. Jay as he discusses his book Timepieces: Three Decades of Commentary in the Baltimore Sun. “As Timepieces makes clear, occasional blog posts are no substitute for the collected newspaper columns of an astute observer whose sustained curiosity, distinctive perspective and dry humor can be crafted into such a compelling book. Peter’s columns range from statehouse politics in Maryland, the periphery of several presidential campaigns and the Baltimore Orioles to farming in Harford County, watermen on the Chesapeake and a symposium on “contemporary writing.”

A  war correspondent in Vietnam for The Washington Post, a long-time farmer in rural Churchville, the one-time owner of The Havre de Grace Record, a commercially licensed river captain and a font of well-chosen literary references, Peter could be forgiven if his sensibilities were more attuned to the nineteenth century than the twentieth, but that’s not remotely the case. Reading Timepieces from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the freshness, spirited curiosity and, dare one say, timelessness of the columns is refreshingly of the moment. We can add Peter Jay to an eminent tradition of newspaper columnists who shared one thing in common: an abiding fascination with local life and place.”

“Each of these pieces tells a tale from start to finish..the work of a reporter with a writer’s many skills.” – Peter Osnos, author of An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen and founder of PublicAffairs Books

“Peter Jay is a funny man. He is also a very perceptive one who writes with equal parts irreverence and passion of the quirky metropolis of Baltimore and the farming hills that unfold beyond it. For this child of Baltimore raised on the outskirts of Charm City, his collection of Baltimore Sun columns is as moving as it is hilarious.”  – Sally H. Jacobs, former Boston Globe reporter and author of The Other Barack, The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father

For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. The next Authors & Oysters event is on 11/2 with Alix Rickloff and her new novel, The Girls in Navy Blue. The Retriever is located at 337 ½ High Street, in Chestertown, Maryland.