Kick off your summer reading and join the Office of Alumni Engagement for book club!

This summer series marks one year of virtual book clubs held over Zoom and hosted by Birmingham-Southern alumni, faculty, and staff. Our summer 2021 clubs feature three clubs, three contemporary novels, and four members of the BSC community leading the discussions.

The program is free and open to alumni as well as faculty and staff, students, parents, and other members of the BSC community. All you need to do is choose a book (purchase, borrow, or check out from your local library), agree to ground rules for the discussion, and commit to finishing the book before the virtual meeting. To allow for discussion, book clubs will be limited to 12 participants each.

Here’s how you can participate:

• Sign up online starting June 21 through the Eventbrite links below.
• Reading period ends July 25.
• Book Clubs will meet from July 26-30.

6:30 p.m. Monday, July 26
“Good Company” by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Facilitators: Dana Porter ’03 and Lucas Pepke ’05
Tags: witty, motherhood, marriage, friendship
Eventbrite Sign-Up Here

Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring – the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five.

Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company – Good Company – afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now? With Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature tenderness, humor, and insight, “Good Company” tells a bighearted story of the lifelong relationships that both wound and heal us.

Dana Porter ’03 MPPM ’11 is a musical theatre and public and private management alumna of the College. Porter has performed nationally and internationally throughout her career from Carnegie Hall to Hong Kong. In Birmingham, she has performed and taught with numerous groups, including the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Children’s Theatre, Birmingham Festival Theatre, The Dance Foundation, The DANE, Homewood Theatre, Sursum Corda, and Virginia Samford Theatre, plus performances at the historic Lyric Theatre. Porter just stepped into the role of assistant director of alumni engagement at BSC and is thrilled to be back on the Hilltop.

Lucas Pepke ’05 is a music alumnus of the College and currently serves as product and marketing manager at STERIS Animal Health in Birmingham. Pepke was born in the Netherlands, and he and his family moved to Birmingham in 1992, where he attended John Carroll Catholic High School and BSC. He is an active vocalist, actor, and supporter of the arts across Birmingham, including as a performer and the former audience development and production coordinator for the Virginia Samford Theatre. Alongside his experience on the stage, Pepke is also a cantor with the EWTN Global Catholic Network. Pepke is also a founding member of Literarily Wasted, an online sci-fi/fantasy book club with thousands of members all over the world. He recently led the charge for the club to write their own book – pulling 44 strangers together to pen a choose your own adventure style book in two months. Now available for pre-order, Take-A-Shot Stories #1: “Beach Trip: Beware!” may be the beginning of yet another quest.

6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 27
“The Kitchen Front” by Jennifer Ryan
Facilitator: Dr. Amy Cottrill
Tags: historical fiction, World War II, food and recipes
Eventbrite Sign-Up Here

Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses; the Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is putting on a cooking contest – and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the contest presents a crucial chance to change their lives.

For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For the lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all–even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together serve only to break it apart?

Dr. Amy Cottrill serves as the Denson Franklin Associate Professor of Religion at BSC and has taught in the Department of Religion since 2007. Cottrill studied English at Earlham College, where she fostered her love of language prior to earning her M.Div. from Methodist Theological School, her Certificate in Modern Hebrew from Ulpan Akiva, and her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Emory University. Cottrill’s research focuses on the Hebrew Bible, specifically the Psalms. Her book, “Language, Power, and Identity in the Lament Psalms of the Individual,” examines the nature of pain throughout the Psalms and how God responds to human suffering. Cottrill was named BSC’s Outstanding Educator of the Year in 2020 and served as the 2021 Commencement speaker.

6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 29
“The Wreckage of My Presence” by Casey Rose Wilson
Facilitator: Mary Catherine McAnnally Scott ’11
Tags: essay, comedy, memoir, pop culture
Eventbrite Sign-Up Here

Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn’t afraid to share. In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human nature. Whether she’s extolling the virtues of eating in bed, processing the humiliation over her father’s late in life perm, mourning her mother’s passing, or revealing her patented method for keeping the mystery alive in a marriage, Casey is witty, candid, and full of poignant and funny surprises.

Humorous dives into her obsessions and areas of personal expertise – self-help, nice guys, cool girls (not her) and how to receive visitors in the bath – are matched by touching meditations on female friendship, anger, grief, motherhood, and identity. Reading this New York Times bestseller is like spending time with a close friend – a deeply passionate, full-tilt, joyous, excessive, compulsive, shameless, hungry-for-it-all, loyal, cheerleading friend. A friend who is ready for any big feelings that come her way and isn’t afraid to embrace them.

Mary Catherine McAnnally Scott ’11 is an English and religious studies graduate from BSC, where she studied under hallowed professors like Amy Cottrill and Fred Ashe. After graduating, she was selected as a Teach For America corps member and was placed in both Eutaw and Huntsville, teaching English and history to middle and high school students. She went on to work for A Plus Education Partnership in Montgomery, then moved to Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, Jordan Scott ’11, and their dog, Tom Hanks. Two children later, Scott now writes for Capital at Play and has freelanced for Huffington Post and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, among others. She remains fascinated by the written word and pop culture in almost equal parts, and runs her own blog where she discusses both.