Chatham Community Library will host author Ed Southern as he discusses his anthology, The Devil's Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina on  Saturday, May 9, from 10:00 am - noon in the Holmes Family Meeting Room. This program is free and open to the public.

North Carolina ain’t what it once was: forests and fields have given way to suburbs and vacation homes, textile mills to high tech, tobacco farms to tourism. That doesn’t mean, though, that the ghosts of the Old North State have gone away. In this anthology, readers might glimpse some of the ghostly apparitions, headless fiends, and creepy hollers they heard about around their childhood campfires. Now, fifteen of the state’s finest contemporary prose writers and poets have reimagined these stories—bringing us fresh tales that are bound to scare the living daylights out of us all over again.  Selected as one of five 2026 North Carolina Reads titles, The Devil's Done Come Back shows reclaims these old ghost tales as living stories, told and retold to frighten and delight .

Ed Southern is the editor of the anthology The Devil's Done Come Back and the author of Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South, a finalist for the SIBA Book Prize in creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Salvation South, Cold Mountain Review, the North Carolina Literary Review, and elsewhere. Since 2008 he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers' Network.

From February to June, North Carolina Humanities hosts virtual monthly book club discussion events where participants will hear from book authors and topic experts. Libraries, community groups, and individuals across North Carolina are encouraged to read along with North Carolina Humanities, attend North Carolina Reads book club discussions, and host their own local book programs to further conversation, camaraderie, and community.  

Funding for this program is made possible by the generous support of the Friends of the Chatham Community Library. 

Residents may visit the libraries’ website www.chathamlibraries.org, or contact the Library at (919) 545-8084 for information on this and other events and programs.

Members of the media interested in attending/covering this event are asked to please notify Public Information Officer Kara Lusk in advance at 919-542-8258 or kara.lusk@chathamcountync.gov.