Seersucker Live returns with pair of spooky books from local authors at The Book Lady

Just in time for Halloween season, The Book Lady Bookstore and Seersucker Live present a special reading of two spooky books by local authors April Tucholke and Nate Pedersen.

This free event is part of the Seersucker Shots: Quick Hit of Lit series which combines readings with live music and drinks.

Tucholke will be reading a portion of her newly-released picture book “Beatrice Likes the Dark” about two sisters: one who loves everything bright and another who loves the dark. Pedersen will be reading a passage from his 2017 book, “Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything,” which is a nonfiction book looking at some of the terrible ways medical practitioners tried to cure diseases over the centuries. Those may seem like two odd choices to include in a reading together, but Tucholke and Pedersen are married and are interested to see who their first joint event attracts.

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“Joni [Saxon-Giusti] from The Book Lady thought that combining some of the more macabre stories from the medical history stuff that I've worked on with April reading a spooky story with a pretty clear Halloween tie-in would make for a fun Seersucker event,” said Pedersen.

“Yeah, it'll be interesting to see who shows up,” said Tucholke. “But we’ll make it work.”

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“April’s been a professional writer since 2013,” said Pedersen. “And we've lived together the whole time and never done an event together, so that is kind of unusual.”

Maybe not too unusual since they write two very different types of books.

“Mine is a picture book about two sisters who are very different one is an introvert and one is an extrovert. They’re learning to love each other despite that,” said Tucholke. One facet of her book that she didn’t expect was that the illustrator Khoa Le would base the pictures of Beatrice on her. Tucholke said she did pull from her own life experiences crafting the character on paper but seeing Beatrice as a younger version of herself was a pleasant surprise.

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While Pederson has a newer book that was released last year, he’s reading from his 2017 book about strange cures because his last book talked about disease outbreaks.

“My first book ‘Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything’ is a little lighter than ‘Patient Zero,’ and it has a macabre sense of humor throughout. We'll visit some of missteps in medical history. That makes for spooky and entertaining reading like corpse medicine and leeches and eating mummies… The kinds of things that people have done throughout the centuries in the pursuit of health.”

The Seersucker Shots event will have an open bar serving drinks and accepting donations for the 501c3 literary arts nonprofit. Brian Dean will be providing the live music and local author Christopher Berinato will emcee.

Tucholke and Pedersen are excited to promote their works but also hope Seersucker Shots will allow them to meet and encourage other writers as well. “As new writers on the Savannah scene,” Pedersen said, “we’ve been warmly welcomed by the community.”

Tucholke agreed. “I would love to connect with other writers at this event."

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA events: Book reading by April Tucholke, Nate Pedersen