The Decatur Library will be hosting an evening with Southern poets at 7:15 PM in the Decatur Library Auditorium, reading from the new book, The Southern Anthology of Poetry: Georgia. Among the poets reading will be Agnes Scotts’ own James May and his wife, Chelsea Rathburn, so come out and support them! This program is totally free.
Letters About Literature is a annual nation-wide competition that asks “students in grades 4-12 … to write a letter to the author — living or dead — whose work has had the most impact on their lives or influenced their view of the world.” Tonight, the Decatur Library will be hosting an awards ceremony for Georgia participants at 2 PM in the Decatur Library Auditorium. They’ll read from their work, and there’ll be a surprise local author making an appearance. Check out some of last year’s winners!
Sheri Joseph, a creative writing professor at Georgia State, will be hosting a launch party for her new novel, Where You Can Find Me, tonight at 7:15 PM at the Decatur Library Auditorium. The event is totally free! Here’s the book’s summary, via Amazon:
A searing exploration of a family’s struggle to heal in the wake of unthinkable tragedy
A week after his eleventh birthday, Caleb Vincent vanishes with hardly a trace. After a three-year search, he is found living a seemingly normal life under a new name with a man he calls his father.While outwardly stunned with joy at his safe recovery, Caleb’s parents and sister are privately scrambling to gather together the pieces of a shattered family. To escape the relentless media attention surrounding her son’s return, Caleb’s mother, Marlene, decides to flee the country and seek refuge in Costa Rica with Caleb and his younger sister, against her estranged husband’s wishes. There Marlene forms a makeshift household with her husband’s expat mother and his charming, aimless older brother, all residing in a broken-down hotel perched at the blustery apex of the continental divide. In the clouds of their new home, the mystery of Caleb’s time gone unfolds while new dangers threaten to pull him back toward his former life.
Where You Can Find Me, a darkly incandescent novel that progresses with page-turning suspense, is sure to establish award-winning author Sheri Joseph as a household name.
Creative Loafing recently named Joseph one of twenty people to watch in 2013, so come out and support a local author!
Jamie Quatro will be reading from her debut collection of short stories, I Want To Show You More, at 7:15 PM tonight at the Decatur Library Auditorium. This is a great opportunity to hear from and support a new Georgia author! Here’s the book’s summary, via Amazon:
“A brilliant new voice in American fiction has arrived. Bright, sharp, startling, utterly distinctive, passionate, and secretive, Quatro’s stories are missives from deep within the landscape of American womanhood. . . . She has earned a place alongside Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, and Alice Munro.”—David Means
“Fasten your seat belt: Jamie Quatro is a writer of great talent who knows how to take a dark turn without ever tapping the brakes and then bring you back into daylight with breathtaking precision. These amazing stories explore the human boundaries between the physical world and the spiritual—lust, betrayal, and loss in perfect balance with love, redemption, and grace.”—Jill McCorkle
Sharp-edged and fearless, mixing white-hot yearning with daring humor, Jamie Quatro’s debut collection is a beautiful and disquieting portrait of infidelity, faith, and family.
The hypnotically intimate, urgent stories in I Want to Show You More are about lives stretched between spirituality and sexuality in the New American South. In narrative modes ranging from the traditional to the fabulist, these stories are interconnected explorations of God, illicit sex, raising children—and running. Jamie Quatro’s stories confront us with dark theological complexities, fractured marriages, and mercurial temptations: a wife comes home with her husband to find her lover’s corpse in their bed; a teenager attends a Bible Camp where he seduces a young cancer survivor with hopes of curing his own rare condition; marathon runners on a Civil War battlefield must carry phallic statues and are punished if they choose to unload their burdens; a girl’s embarrassment over attending a pool party with her quadriplegic mother turns to fierce devotion under the pitying gaze of other guests; and a husband asks his wife to show him how she would make love to another man.
I Want to Show You More unleashes Quatro’s exhilarating talent for exposing the quiet terrors of modern life with stunning and subversive energy.
Check out The New York Times’ review of the collection here.
The last event for the 42nd Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival will be Anjail Rashida Ahmad’s reading in the Winter Theatre in the Dana Fine Arts Building at 1 PM today. The event will be followed by a reception and a book signing. Ahmad is Agnes Scott Class of ’92, so come support your fellow Scottie!
Today’s a huge day for the 42nd Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival—I hope you’re prepared to run around campus.
Things get started at 12:30 PM in the Luchsinger Fireplace Lounge with a reception for our contest finalists. At 1 PM, our visiting writers will field any questions you might have about the writing process, publishing, or anything else (within reason, of course!). The Q & A is also in the Luchsinger Fireplace Lounge. At 4 PM, join us in the Winter Theater in the Dana Fine Arts Building for Cristina Garcia’s reading. This will be followed by a reception and a book signing. At 8 PM, join us in Gaines Chapel in Presser Hall for Gish Jen’s reading, which will also be followed with a reception and a book signing.
See y’all there!
Join us in the Luchsinger Fireplace Lounge in the Alston Student Center this evening at 5 PM to hear Agnes Scott’s finalists in the writing contest read their work! Come and support our Scottie writers.
Join us in the Buttrick Film Room (G-4) at 1 PM today to hear faculty read their work, including Christine Cozzens and James May. This event will get you psyched for the Writers’ Festival next week!
Jessica Hagy, author of the blog Indexed, is promoting her new book How To Be Interesting, and she’ll be talking at the Decatur Library Auditorium tonight at 7:15 PM. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the signing that will follow the talk. Check out the blog that started it all here!
Ayana Mathis will be reading from her debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, tonight at the Decatur Library Auditorium (bottom-most level!) at 7:15 PM. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is the first selection by Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. The event is completely free! Here’s the novel’s summary, via Amazon:
The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection
The arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream.
Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is her first novel.
