Local Book Festival to Feature National Bestselling Authors

Two dozen fiction bestseller authors whose books have been recently added to collections of the Atlanta-Public Library System will be appearing this coming weekend at the Decatur Book Festival:

• Kevin J. Anderson
• Mary Kay Andrews   
• Max Allan Collins      
• Tanarive Due
• Clyde Edgerton         
• Melissa Fay Greene    
• Jessica Handler                      
• Patti Callahan Henry
• Gregg Hurwitz
• Joshilyn Jackson                     
• Tayari Jones
• Cameron McWhirter
• Thomas Mullen
• H.T. Narea
• Elizabeth Nunez
• George Pelecanos
• Louise Penny
• Tom Perrotta
• Janisse Ray
• Karin Slaughter
• Jeffrey Stepakoff
• James L. Swanson
• Amy Waldman
• Amanda Kyle Williams

If one of these authors is among your favorites, this weekend you can – for free and in person! – hear them read and/or be interviewed.

The festival’s full line-up of authors is here, and the full schedule is here.

2011 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival Begins Tonight!

This year’s festival kick-off event begins at 7:30pm at Charis Books & More in Little Five Points.

The entire festival is free and open to the public.

Details about the festival, which continues through Saturday evening, are at the festival’s website.

Save the Date: The 2011 Decatur Book Festival

Here’s this year’s festival poster design, which, per usual features festival mascot Bookzilla.

Labor Day weekend is months away, but we wanted to mention it anyway, so local bibliophiles won’t forget the dates and inadvertently make plans to go out of town that weekend.

The lengthy roster of confirmed author appearances is here.

Found via Baby Got Books

Authors in Atlanta Tonight: Kathryn Stockett, Rebecca White, Terry Kay

Atlanta bibliophiles can attend free readings by three popular authors this evening. At the Savannah College of Art & Design on Peachtree Street in Midtown, Kathryn Stockett and Rebecca White will both be appearing, while over in Decatur, the Georgia Center for the Book hosts Terry Kay.

Found via The Midtown Patch and the Georgia Center for the Book

Mary Oliver at Emory Next Month

Poet Mary Oliver will read from her poems at Emory University on Sunday, January 30, 2011, beginning at 4pm.

The reading is free and open to the public.

Details here.

Upcoming Author Appearances in the Atlanta Area

The fall “literary season” is already underway, and the following writers are headed to the Atlanta area during the next couple months:

• Margaret Atwood
• Billy Collins
• Ken Follett
• Nick Hornby
• Salman Rushdie
• David Sedaris

You can find details about these and other writers’ lectures and/or readings – most of them free and open to the public - by clicking on one or more of the Local Literary Calendars listed in the right-hand margin of this blog, and browsing through their October and November listings. And aAvid booklovers might want to consider bookmarking their favorite events calendar – Atlanta is a major stop, year-round, for authors on book promotion tours.

Save the Date: The Decatur Book Festival

If you’re not going out of town Labor Day weekend, you need to mark your calendar to remind you to head out to the 5th Annual Decatur Book Festival.

You can scan a list of the several hundred authors who’ve been booked for this year’s festival here.

Found at Baby Got Books

Margaret Atwood in Atlanta This Coming Fall

Margaret Atwood was in Atlanta earlier this year, but she’s coming back again this fall.

Atwood will deliver the next series of Richard Elmann Lectures in Modern Literature at Emory University on October 24, 25, and 26. Atwoods’s topic for her lectures will be “In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imagination.”

The lecture series is free and open to the public.

Found via Emory Magazine

Georgia Center for the Book Showcasing Numerous Authors

February and march are chock-full of author readings and signings.

Authors whose appearances in Atlanta the Center is sponsoring include Frances Smith Foster, Jim Wallis, Keen and hannah Salwen, Karen Spears Zacaharias, Alex Berenson, Thomas Ricks, and Deborah Plant.

The impressive lineup begins this evening with Thomas Mullen’s appearance at the Decatur Library. 

Details at the Center’s webpage.

Contributed by Ponce staffer Leticia Stinson

Margaret Atwood in Atlanta

When: Tuesday, February 23rd, 6:30-8 p.m

Where: Savannah College of Art & Design/Atlanta, 1600 Peachtree Street, Atlanta: Building C, 4th Floor Events Space

The event is free and open to the public. For more information about Atwood’s appearance (and upcoming appearances by other authors), visit the sponsor’s events calendar or call 404.253.3206

Contributed by Ponce staffer Leticia Stinson, who saw the notice in the February 2010 issue of Atlanta (page 50)