Laura Leigh Morris Reading & Signing

Meet with us at Hub City Bookshop on August 27th as Laura Leigh Morris discusses her new novel The Stone Catchers. 

"... an unflinching picture of the debris field across an entire community when a student opens fire in a rural West Virginia college... with this incisive, deeply human novel, told in many voices, Laura Leigh Morris gets at something beyond the words of it. The Stone Catchers is chilling, heart-rending, powerful, and true."―Ashley Warlick

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Get a 10% discount on the book when you purchase a copy on Eventbrite. 

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About the Book

In a span of minutes, the lives of four members of Brickton Community College change forever when an active shooter enters the campus and opens fire. Running on adrenaline and fear, the group—a crew of students and their teacher—subdues the perpetrator in a violent frenzy that leads to the man's death. Reeling from the shock of their collective actions, the group is thrown into turmoil when they realize that the person they have killed is someone they all knew. Narrated in alternating voices and set against the backdrop of an economically depressed Appalachian town, Laura Leigh Morris's The Stone Catchers explores the immeasurable pain and trauma experienced by the survivors of a school shooting. Forced to process the horror of the event, mourn, and to reconcile themselves to their newfound recognition as local heroes, the survivors grapple with the losses suffered by their community and their own actions. They come face to face with the unquantifiable cost gun violence exacts on the families, friends, and futures of a town fractured by tragedy.

About the Author

Laura Leigh Morris is the author of The Stone Catchers: A Novel (UP Kentucky, August 2024) and Jaws of Life: Stories (West Virginia UP, 2018). She lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she teaches creative writing and literature at Furman University. Before that, she spent three years as the National Endowment for the Arts/Bureau of Prisons Artist-in-Residence at Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. She’s previously published short fiction in STORY Magazine, North American Review: Open Space, JMWW, Laurel Review, Redivider, and other journals and anthologies. Originally from north central West Virginia, most of her fiction is set there. From the landscape to the rich variety of people to the long history of resource extraction, the region serves as a rich backdrop to both her life and her stories. She is currently working on a new novel and a collection of short stories that she thinks of as uncanny domestics.