Jimmie Meese Moomaw, author of the memoir “Southern Fried Child in Home Seeker’s Paradise,” will be at Literary Bookpost on Saturday, Oct. 24.

She will sign and talk about her book, which is full of tales of growing up in the deep South in the 1940s and 1950s.

She was the only child of hard working parents who were also hard drinking. She had an aunt who loved her unconditionally and took care of her as she grew up. Her mother was Etta Maye and her aunt Ella May.

Her daddy could never actually say the words “I love you,” but she remembers love shining in his eyes and how he’d say, “I don’t care nothing about you” with an inflection that convinced her she was loved.

She published the book in 2010. Moomaw taught communication courses at the college and university level for 40 years, but never lost her Southern roots. She says she grew up with “horses and healers and heathens and whores and flawed parents who loved me both too much and not enough.”

In the memoir, Moomaw tells stories of amazing, real people, like the woman who claimed she could cast devils out of kittens and the 13-year-old choir boy who liked to burn churches down for fun.

The stories she tells are funny and frequently poignant, like real life. The book will be available for sale at Literary Bookpost, where the signing starts at 2 p.m.

Other events coming up include the Enviromingle with the Center for the Environment at Catawba College, 5-7 p.m. on Oct. 22.

On Friday, Oct. 23 at 6 p.m., St. Thomas Players presents The Phoenix Readers’ “An Evening with Collins and Rash.” Billy Collins, the beloved former poet laureate of the United States, takes ordinary words to extraordinary places in his imaginative and accessible poems.

North Carolina writer Ron Rash’s “Burning Bright” won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story award.  Rash is also the recipient of the O. Henry Prize for excellence in short story writing and taught at Western Carolina University and Appalachian State University.

All performances are free and open to the public.