Annie Cheatham Reads Southern Stories

On Friday, November 14, The LAVA Center in Greenfield will welcome Annie Cheatham to read from her new book, The Baby’s Gotta Have Somethin’: Glimpses of a Southern Childhood. The event will be at 7 pm. All are welcome to this free event.

“All of the stories in this book, both fiction and non-fiction, describe places, conditions, and relationships that taught me resilience and gave me courage while I was growing up in the 1950’s South,” Cheatham said. “Unwritten rules about race, class, gender identity, and religion dominated my world, and as a child, I looked for loving people who could guide me to safety. These stories are about a few of those people.”

Annie is a retired middle school teacher, speechwriter, co-author with Mary Clare Powell of This Way Daybreak Comes: Women’s Values and the Future, owner of Annie’s Garden Store in Amherst, WHAI’s Greenfield radio host for “The Backyard Gardener,” Executive Director of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), and President of the New England Farmers Union. She lives in Conway with her spouse Ann Gibson and two cat sisters found abandoned in a cardboard box in Ashfield.