The Decatur Book Festival is held every Labor day weekend. Decatur is only a few miles from Atlanta. I love this festival which started in 2006. There's always a great turn out and its put together very well.
Tananarive Due is going to be attending. OMG I am so excited. Yes, I am seriously fan gushing. The first book I read by Due was The Living Blood. I picked it up because of the cover, which screamed read me, which I did. I've been hooked ever since. The author's latest My Soul to Take comes out at the beginning of September, right on time for the festival. I've already had a chance to read it, loved it.
I've banned myself from buying any more books until I get a new job. Though I am very tempted to break that for an autographed copy of My Soul to Take. I have a job prospect so hopefully it won't be an issue.
Due will be signing with debut author Alma Katsu. Katsu's novel The Taker comes out at the beginning of September as well. I've seen the book in passing, its been getting excellent reviews. It hasn't been on my reading radar because of the romance aspect but I want to give it a try before the festival.
If I go to a panel event I like to be familiar with, if not all then most of the authors who are presenting. It can't be easy for debut authors to be on a panel. All the attention is on the established and bestselling authors. So I will do my best to get a review copy of The Taker and have a question ready for Katsu.
Elizabeth Nunez will be signing her latest Boundaries. I haven't read Nunez before but her name sounded familiar. Then I remembered why, author and educator Ashley Hope Perez's guest post on Women Writers of the Caribbean.
Tayari Jones will be signing Silver Sparrow. I haven't been enforcing my no buying book ban, and I already have a signed copy. So I probably won't go to this appearance, I don't want to be that fan that shows up every time an author is in town. Ain't nobody calling security on me.
If you live in Atlanta and haven't had an opportunity to attend one of Jones signings I highly recommend going. The author is from Atlanta and it shows in the turn out. Its n
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Elizabeth Nunez, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 3 of 3
By: L. M. Baldwin,
on 8/8/2011
Blog: Color Online (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: my soul to take, boundaries, elizabeth nunez, perisa walker, black orchid blues, 2011 decatur book festival, the taker, tananarive due, alma katsu, Add a tag
By: Manuel Ramos,
on 7/14/2011
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Elizabeth Nunez, Andrea Camilleri, Esmeralda Santiago, Rudolfo Anaya, Oscar Hijuelos, Juan Gómez-Jurado, Add a tag
Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir
Oscar Hijuelos 
Gotham - June, 2011
[from the publisher]
The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and, in turn, his literature. Growing up in 1950's working-class New York City to Cuban immigrants, Hijuelos journey to literary acclaim is the evolution of an unlikely writer.
Oscar Hijuelos has enchanted readers with vibrant characters who hunger for success, love, and self-acceptance. In his first work of nonfiction, Hijuelos writes from the heart about the people and places that inspired his international bestselling novels.
Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry- writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of an often prejudiced working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension when his relationship to his family and culture changes forever. During a sojourn in pre-Castro Cuba with his mother, he catches a disease that sends him into a Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The year long stay estranges him from the very language and people he had so loved.
With a cast of characters whose stories are both funny and tragic, Thoughts Without Cigarettes follows Hijuelos's subsequent quest for his true identity into adulthood, through college and beyond-a mystery whose resolution he eventually discovers hidden away in the trappings of his fiction, and which finds its most glorious expression in his best-known book, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Illuminating the most dazzling scenes from his novels, Thoughts Without Cigarettes reveals the true stories and indelible memories that shaped a literary genius.
Randy Lopez Goes Home
Rudolfo Anaya
University of Oklahoma Press - June, 2011
[from the publisher]
A new novel by the master storyteller that explores what it means to go home
When he was a young man, Randy Lopez left his village in northern New Mexico to seek his fortune. Since then, he has learned some of the secrets of success in the Anglo world—and even written a book called Life Among the Gringos. But something has been missing. Now he returns to Agua Bendita to reconnect with his past and to find the wisdom the Anglo world has not provided. In t
By: L. M. Baldwin,
on 3/29/2011
Blog: Color Online (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: patricia powell, rosario ferre, elizabeth nunez, women writers of the caribbean, maryse conde, michelle cliff, jean rhys, edwidge danticat, jamaica kincaid, ashley hope perez, Add a tag
Educator and debut author Ashley Hope Perez was kind enough to agree to do a guest post on Women Writers of the Caribbean
Reading Women Writers of the Caribbean
There’s more to Caribbean literature than the (wonderful) well-known works like A Simple Habana Melody and In the Time of the Butterflies.
Come with me to discover the texts I teach as part of my college class on women writers of the Caribbean. These titles are not to be missed! I’ll discuss them, not in order of publication, but in the order in which I teach them.
“A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua). This piece is the first text I introduce students to. I start here because Kincaid issues a forceful critique against tourism, and I want to challenge my students to find ways of reading that go beyond literary tourism. This is our st arting place for discussions of the connections between reading and ethics. The text often makes readers feel guilty, angry, and uncomfortable. We talk about why. 
Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad). This is a fascinating adaptation and retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is the first novel I teach in the course because Nunez’s critique of colonialism, valorization of the local and (re)appropriation of a master plot by a white writer are features that are pretty plain to students. This is what I call an “apprenticeship” novel that helps sensitize students to themes that they’ll encounter (more subtly) in subsequent novels.
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe). Here, Condé puts Tituba, a marginal historical figure from the Salem witch trials, on center stage, tracing her travels from the Caribbean to New England and back again. In addition to her reclamation of and play with the Salem history, Condé incorporates a cameo appearance by Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, changing Hester’s fate in the retelling. Check out this blog for a subtle reading of I, Tituba 
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Dominica). This classic of Caribbean literature offers yet another instance of rewriting canonical texts, for it imagines the pre-history
This is always my favorite book event of the year. Can't wait!
Glad I am not the only one exicted about the festival. And I've been in enjoying the Silver Sparrow discussion over at goodreads.