Janet Hurley presents: GLOVE SHY: A SISTER’S RECKONING, with Bland Simpson at Flyleaf Books

The heartbeat of family life is the thump of fists on a heavy bag.

In the 1970s, Janet Hurley’s older brother, Brian, was the teenage protégé of a World Heavyweight Champion who lived in their hometown. Brian was a young man of brilliance and wit. His talents were broad, yet boxing was the path he chose. And, soon enough, family life revolved around his training, his bouts, his future: Olympic medals? A pro career?

Glove Shy is a tender-tough memoir, a loving look at how a sport as elemental as boxing can obscure the powerful forces this family never saw coming. But, when one of your own is in the ring, slugging, being slugged, what else can matter?

Janet Hurley was born and raised in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York before coming south to Carolina for its undergraduate creative writing program. She has lived in the south ever since publishing feature stories and profiles for NC-based magazines, Our State and VERVE and, most recently, in the Bitter Southerner. In 2008, she started a small business, True Ink, providing creative opportunities for young writers. This led to co-founding Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community (AWITSC), a non-profit committed to racial equity and social change through the power of arts, culture and restorative self-expression. Janet currently lives in Asheville where she and her husband, David raised their two children, Maren and Liam, and now live with their dog, Wilson.

Bland Simpson is the Kenan Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at UNC Chapel Hill and longtime pianist and composer-lyricist in The Red Clay Ramblers, the acclaimed Tony Award-winning North Carolina string band, which celebrated its 50th anniversary Fall 2022. He has published ten books, all but one about North Carolina, focusing on the state’s eastern sound country and coastal provinces. His most recent work, North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky (UNC Press 2021, with photography by his wife Ann Cary Simpson [their 4th collaboration], along with Tom Earnhardt and Scott Taylor) won the North Caroliniana Society’s 2021 Book Award.