Author Judith Turner-Yamamoto, Asheboro native, returns for Sunset Series appearance

Judith Turner-Yamamoto

ASHEBORO – Randolph readers will recognize familiar locales — Little Beane Store, Blue Mist Drive-In, the Sir Robert Motel and others — in Asheboro native Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel, Loving the Dead and Gone.

Turner-Yamamoto — Judith Cox, growing up in Asheboro — will appear in conversation with Randolph Hub journalist Larry Penkava in a Friends of the Library Sunset Signature Series event at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, August 19, at downtown Asheboro’s historic
Sunset Theatre.

Her appearance is free and the public is invited. The Sunset Series is sponsored by the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau, the City of Asheboro and the Friends of the Randolph County Public Libraries.

In Loving the Dead and Gone, a freak car crash in a place not unlike Randolph County puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. The choral novel delves into the minds of four characters, and explores how the traumas of the present stir those of the past.

Set in the world of 1920s tobacco farms and 1960s textile mills, the novel exhibits a lyric strength and deep and empathic understanding of working-class daily life in rural and small-town 20th century North Carolina.

Loving the Dead and Gone was named a Gold Medal winner in Southern Regional Fiction in the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2023 UC-Berkeley Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize, where it was an honorable mention in General Fiction and finalist for the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award for Debut Fiction.

Publisher’s Weekly calls Loving the Dead and Gone “a bittersweet and fantastical debut.” Foreword Reviews says “Loving the Dead and Gone is a moving, insightful novel about growing through tragedy.”

Turner-Yamamoto’s work has appeared in over 30 journals and anthologies. She has received more than fifteen awards and fellowships, including the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Virginia Screenwriting Award.

She has taught fiction at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, the Danville Writer’s Conference, and the Writers’ Center at Bethesda, Maryland. A featured author and panelist, she has appeared at various book festivals and is a keynote speaker at the 2023 Santa Barbara Writers Conference.

As an art historian, Turner-Yamamoto’s on-air interviews have been featured on NPR affiliate WVXU. She has penned over 1,000 articles on the arts, travel, design, books, fashion, and food that have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Elle, Interiors, Art & Antiques, The Los Angeles Times, Travel & Leisure, and many others.

Begun in 2018, the Sunset Series brings high profile speakers and performers to the Sunset Theatre. The theatre is located at 234 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro.

For further information, contact the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau at 800-626-2672.