Friday, December 15
Theme: “Good Grief!”
Story Parlor | 227 Haywood Road
Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
Parking & Policies
Tickets $20 in advance / $25 at the door if any remain
Our Story Mixers always sell out, so grab your tickets early!
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The holidays, despite their bright lights and jolly jingles, can be a difficult time for many who have suffered loss in their lives. Join Story Parlor for an evening of stories, music, and performance about finding good in the grief, joy in the world, and hope for the holidays.
ARTIST LINE-UP
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Raymond Barfield is a writer and doctor. He has published four books of philosophy. Two of them (The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy and The Poetic A Priori: Philosophical Imagination in a Meaningful Universe) are part of his ongoing attempt to understand what, if anything, imagination shows us about the universe and ourselves. The other two (Wager: Beauty, Suffering, and Being in the World and The Practice of Medicine as Being in Time) are part of his ongoing attempt to understand what, if anything, suffering shows us about the universe and ourselves, and to figure out how to be a good doctor while waiting for the day he has to figure out how to be a patient.
He has also published two novels (The Book of Colors and The Seventh Sentence) and two books of poetry (Life in the Blind Spot and Dreams and Griefs of an Underworld Aeronaut). His third book of poetry (Bruno Glooms on the Bridge of Sighs) will be published in early 2024. Around the same time, his third novel will be published — a novel about Immanuel Kant, regarding which the NYT Review of Books wrote, or at least should have written, or should, at some point, write, “At last, a novel that captures the riveting life of this renegade philosopher, whose adventures have long been the stuff of legend, but whose daring and outrageous courage, in both his life and his writing, made the task of producing a fictional account daunting. Readers worldwide have been clamoring for a novel about Kant, and Raymond Barfield has answered their call with his thrilling page-turner called Dreams of a Spirit Seer.”
In his day job as a palliative care physician, he is endlessly humbled and astonished by the stories his patients and their families tell him while they find their way through really hard stuff. He also enjoys supporting artists, writers, and restauranteurs. He currently focuses on the preservation of Myrtles Crepes (Savannah’s beloved monument to food-as-art-for-the-tongue) and on several projects, including the Savannah Giraffic Park Initiative developed by the ever-surprising Psylvia Olivie Amore-Fouladi — Forsyth Park activist, writer of children’s stories, and occasional lecturer on the art of curating words and bliss. Psylvia and her friend Winter honored him by giving him a lifetime appointment as writer-in-residence at Red Bird and Grackle, the famous Savannah book store, wine portal, gathering place, and publishing house across from the so-called “AT&T” building. The publishing house still works by invitation only because of the astonishing number of books it publishes, and it focuses on musical poetry in the spirit of Hopkins and Yeats, fiction that reveals character gently but deeply, and the production of high-quality popup books with political, fashion, culinary, or ontological themes. Suggestions for other popup book subjects will be considered if they do not involve porcupines, cacti, or thorny bushes that might endanger children if realistically portrayed in the popup book world.
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Elizabeth is a multi-instrumentalist, a singer, and an absolute delight. She performs as a solo artist and with several bands across WNC that encompass a variety of genres, including rock, americana, blues and Latin folk. Elizabeth writes music that will take you to therapy, turn you on, and incite a revolution. You're gonna fall in love with every single bit of her.
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Niina Pollari is a poet and Finnish translator currently located in Western North Carolina. She is the author of the poetry collections Path of Totality (Soft Skull 2022) and Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015), as well as the co-author of the split chapbook Total Mood Killer (Tiger Bee Press 2017).
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Slow Runner is Michael Flynn, an Americana-adjacent singer/songwriter based in western North Carolina. His songs have been featured on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Shameless, and on commercials for useful products like cars and shampoo. He’s also won a few awards for songwriting, most recently the 2021 Newsong Music Grand Prize. After a few years performing under his own name, Michael signed a record deal with SonyBMG in 2006 and began releasing music as Slow Runner in a collaboration with producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaler and other musical friends. Slow Runner has spawned 5 full length albums among other EPs and singles, and has toured internationally with acts like The Avett Brothers, Josh Ritter, Built to Spill, William Fitzsimmons, and many others. After a few years releasing more music under his own name Michael has returned to the Slow Runner moniker to further explore the brainy, eclectic pop songwriting that led American Songwriter to call him ‘a pioneering solo artist with songs ‘as catchy as they are clever’ (Relix Magazine). Michael lives in Saluda with his wife, daughter, and an ornery dog he has begrudgingly begun to love.
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