Black Tie Optional: 17 Short Stories

by Carrie Jane Knowles

Black Tie Optional is a book for the front of the store, and an excellent recommendation for book clubs. Carrie Knowles’ short stories are spare, tightly woven narratives with crisp, compelling dialogue. They cut to the bone. The themes in this collection are far-reaching, touching on family ties and friendship, infidelity, loss, Alzheimer’s and impending death, fear of terrorism, border patrol, and life after death. The stories are guaranteed to challenge perceptions and assumptions and to spark lively discussion. As a reviewer recently said about one of her earlier “If all writing were this good, I’d read more books.”

155 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 14, 2019

About the author

Twelve years ago, Carrie Knowles bought a small office building at the southernmost edge of Historic Oakwood in Downtown Raleigh. She named the building the Free Range Studio and inscribed this on the wall: Creativity should have no boundaries and dreams no fences. “That’s how I see the world,” Knowles says, “and the way I hope to live my life as a creative person.”

The Free Range Studio has provided office space to a wide range of writers and other creative people over the last twelve years, including Carrie’s close friend and fellow author, Peggy Payne. Both Peggy and Carrie not only have their offices at Free Range, but also coach other writers and teach classes there.

Carrie has published dozens of short stories and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and three novels: Lillian’s Garden (Roundfire Books, 2013), Ashoan’s Rug (Roundfire Books, 2013), and A Garden Wall in Provence (Owl Canyon Press, 2017) and a collection of short fiction, Black Tie Optional (Owl Canyon Press, 2019). Her non-fiction memoir about her family’s struggles with their mother’s Alzheimer’s, The Last Childhood: A Family Story of Alzheimer's, initially published by Three Rivers Press, was recently revised, updated and reissued through Amazon.