Girls in Trucks author, Katie Crouch
Thursday, April 24th, 2008 
Sarah Walters is on a quest for love and fulfillment. So the Charleston debutante moves to New York City and struggles through a series of bad relationships in Katie Crouch’s debut novel, Girls in Trucks.
Crouch’s own story isn’t that far removed from her protagonist’s. Crouch is also a Charleston native who’s lived in New York, and admits to making a lot of dating mistakes.
“The book is autobiographical emotionally,” Crouch says over the phone from her San Francisco home. “I sort of took my life and then heightened it, because if I wrote a book about my life it would be pretty dull.”
Krista Derbecker Gilliam speaks with Katie Crouch
DAN VEACH is the editor and publisher of The Atlanta Review, and the creator of the nonprofit Poetry Atlanta. He won the Sotheby’s International Poetry Competition in 1982 and has published multiple poems in various journals. April is National Poetry Month and Veach, along with poet Turner Cassity, will give a reading Wed., APRIL 9, at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. $3-$5. 8:15 p.m. 980 Briarcliff Road. 404-872-5338. 
Pearl Cleage will be at Charis Books on Thurs., March 27, for a reading from her sixth novel Seen it All and Done the Rest, a Q&A and signing. Free. 7:30-9 p.m. Charis Books & More, 1189 Euclid Ave. 404-524-0304. 
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming (released this week) opens with Laurel, a thirtysomething wife and mother living a peaceful existence in an upscale gated community, who wakes up one summer evening to find the ghost of her daughter’s best friend, pointing to the pool, where the ghost’s dead body floats in the water. Laurel enlists her estranged actress sister, Thalia, to help her with the aftermath, and what follows is one part mystery, one part ghost story and eight parts family interaction.
