Celebrating the Lehigh Valley in Print

Celebrate various locations around the Lehigh Valley (and Slate Belt) as they appear as settings in various books by local authors. Parisian Phoenix Publishing has titles that present a fictionalized Bethlehem (romantic comedy Trapped: What if Skunks Were Matchmakers? recently released with full-color photography and a new cover), short stories that depict growing up in Bethlehem in the 1950s and 1960s (Coffee in the Morning by Nazareth author Larry Sceurman. The book also includes an anchor story that features the Jersey Devil and a disgraced Mummer), the small-town life in Fullerton in the 1970s just when the Lehigh Valley Mall opened (The Death of Big Butch also by Larry Sceurman) and various locations in Easton, Roseto and Mount Bethel (Angel Ackerman’s Fashion and Fiends horror series, which now has four volumes Manipulations, Courting Apparitions, Recovery and Road Trip). This combination of readings and stories will take those attending on a journey throughout the region and highlight setting as a character all its own.

Angel Ackerman is a print journalist, author and founder of Parisian Phoenix Publishing. Her Fashion and Fiends novels present horror stories with a woman’s touch. She currently writes for Armchair Lehigh Valley, Kiss and Tell Magazine and Hippocampus. She is the current president of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group and vice president of the Mary Meuser Memorial Library Board of Trustees.

Larry Sceurman grew up in the Kaywin section of Bethlehem, Pa. In his early teens, he worked with his grandfather in a small auto body repair shop where he observed that stories were a big part of the human experience. From vocational teacher to storyteller and now author, Larry is also influenced by the writings of Laura E. Richards, John O’Connor, Richard Ford, Michael J. Meade, Richard Rohr, and Billy Collins.

Nancy Scott’s close to 975 essays and poems have recently appeared in, among others, *82 Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Braille Forum, Chrysanthemum, Kaleidoscope, The Mighty, One Sentence Poems, Pulse Voices, Shark Reef, Wordgathering, and Yahoo News.