Craig Nova, author of "Brook Trout and the Writing Life" will be at The Country Bookshop today at 7 p.m.

In his memoir, "Brook Trout and the Writing Life," novelist Craig Nova, a North Carolina resident, explores the interconnections between his work as a writer, his personal life and his passion for fly-fishing.

Nova leads the reader into his courtship, marriage, the birth of his children and his life as a father, husband, writer, friend, citizen and angler. Just as the author observes the life of the elusive and beautiful brook trout in the tea-colored streams, he finds interconnections to his daily life - he teaches his daughter to build an igloo; he deals with the disappointment of a very public mean-spirited review of his much-anticipated novel; he gazes at his wife-to-be in her hammock by a stream; and he finds himself the victim of a random blackmailer.

This autobiography is a reprint and expansion of Nova's highly regarded memoir originally published in 1999. This new edition includes substantial sections of new work and an introduction by Ann Beattie.

Craig Nova is the award-winning author of 12 novels and one autobiography. His latest novel is "The Informer." Nova's writing has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine and Men's Journal, among others. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005 he was named Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

"When my children went away to college, I realized that I had some extra time on my hands," says Nova. "I thought it would be a good idea to share some of what I had learned after those years alone in a room."