The Second Annual Short Story America Festival and Conference will bring readers, authors and teachers of short stories together again in this new Lowcountry literary tradition. Scheduled for September 26-29 in Beaufort, the event includes readings by authors, workshops on writing stories and on understanding this great literary art form, book signings, the launch of Short Story America, Volume Three, and two great receptions to foster new and old friendships around a mutual passion for stories.

The wonderful people portrayed in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation (1998, Random House) were a tough act to follow. These were "America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America." A good case can be made that this remarkable group had its roots several decades earlier and laid the cultural foundation for very special future generations.

My husband, Vince, and I have just returned from a much-needed vacation to the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. We both have salt water in our veins and love the ocean. Still, it's always great to admire the breathtaking majesty of the mountains. The cooler temperatures were pretty wonderful, too! Always on a quest for new recipes and catering ideas, I found myself surrounded by trees loaded with apples and couldn't resist the temptation to test some inspirations.

A conversation with award winning Beaufort writer Teresa Bruce about her upcoming book, "The Other Mother," and the transformative power of chance encounters.

 Many years ago during his travels in Africa, Ernest Hemingway got to know a fearless young woman named Beryl Markham who showed him a bit of a memoir she was working on. The notoriously egocentric Hemingway immediately dashed off a letter to his editor, the legendary Maxwell Perkins. "She has written so well, and marvelously well," Hemingway concedes, "that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen."

This is sort of how I feel about my friend, Teresa Bruce.