Noted
author, poet Erica Jong, pillar of the Sexual Revolution, announced as keynote
speaker for 2015 AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical
Feminist
writer Roxane Gay will interview Jong at Emory’s Schwartz Center; Hundreds of
authors, new tracks, art initiatives and activities for all ages and interests
at the 10th annual event
June 15,
2015 (Atlanta) — Novelist Erica Jong, whose
ground-breaking book Fear of Flying blew conventional thinking about women, marriage and
sexuality out of the water when it was published in 1973, will be the featured keynote speaker at the 2015 Atlanta
Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical (AJC
DBF) from Sept. 4-6, 2015.
Jong will kick off the 10th annual festival on Friday, Sept.
4, at 8 p.m. at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University. Provocative
author and essayist Roxane Gay will join her on stage in an interview.
Jong became a pillar of
the sexual revolution and a hero to millions with the publication of Fear of Flying. Now 73, she has written more
than 20 books, including 10 works of fiction. She comes to the AJC DBF for the
launch of her new novel Fear of Dying,
a sequel to Fear of Flying that is a
hilarious, unsparingly honest and heart-wrenching story about what happens when
one woman steps reluctantly into the afternoon of life. She questions what it
really takes to be human and female in the 21st century.
AJC DBF Executive Director Daren Wang is
honored to have Jong as the keynote speaker.
“What a pairing — to have these two literary
giants together is going to be a real treat,” Wang said. “It’s hard to
overstate her impact, not just on the literary world, but on American culture.
More than 40 years have passed since she changed the way we looked at sex and
what it means to be a modern woman. Erica Jong opened up a whole new world and
Roxane Gay is charting the territory. With the publication of her collection Bad Feminist and her novel An Untamed State, Time Magazine labeled
2014 as ‘The Year of Roxane Gay.’ Having these two powerhouse thinkers and
writers together will create a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
AJC DBF Programming Director Philip Rafshoon
is proud of the outstanding lineup.
“In our 10th year, the DBF once again features
some of the best and brightest writers of the day, enabling our festival-goers
to have fresh and relevant experiences,” Rafshoon said. “With the great support
of publishers, authors and our own community, we have been able to create
another high-powered and unique lineup. This year, we have an unbelievable
array of rising literary stars, festival favorites, heroes and literary icons.”
This year’s featured kidnote
author will be Judy Schachner, creator
of the beloved Skippyjon Jones picture books. The New York Times has referred to Schachner as “something like the
James Joyce for the elementary school set,” as her stream-of-consciousness
style invites the reader into the head of Skippy, a cat who thinks he is a
Chihuahua. She launches a new character and picture book at this year’s
festival with Dewey Bob, the story of
a young raccoon who fancies himself a collector until he realizes his
collection is missing something important — a friend. The kidnote address will
move this year to Decatur High School’s Performing Arts Center and will begin
at 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 4.
Following the keynote and kidnote addresses,
the festival kicks off in earnest on Saturday, Sept. 5, with a children’s
parade on the Decatur Square led by Drew Daywalt, author of the best-selling picture book, The Day the Crayons Quit. Parade
participants are invited to dress as their favorite color from the crayon box. Events and author
presentations will continue in downtown Decatur throughout the weekend. A
second children’s parade will start Sunday’s festivities, led by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser, co-creators of the popular Fancy Nancy
series. Participants are invited to dress their fanciest and actors from Synchronicity
Theatre’s fall presentation of Fancy
Nancy, The Musical! will join them.
Author highlights for the 2015 AJC DBF
include:
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award
finalist novel Serena, in addition to
other prize-winning novels including One
Foot in Eden, The World Made Straight and the short story collection Nothing Gold Can Stay. He launches his
latest novel, Above the Waterfall, at
the AJC DBF. In this poetic and haunting tale, a small-town sheriff nearing
retirement battles daily with meth-addicted locals and rural poverty in a
tight-knit Appalachian town full of secrets.
New York Times best-selling author Sara Paretsky has been credited with transforming the mystery
through the creation of her female private eye, V.I. Warshawski. The Mystery
Writers of America named her Grand Master in 2011 and she received the Cartier
Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award from Great Britain’s Crime Writers’
Association. In Brush Back, the dogged
sleuth confronts crooked Chicago politicians and uncovers buried family secrets.
ReShonda Tate Billingsley’s No. 1 national best-selling novels
include Let the Church Say Amen, I Know I’ve Been Changed and Say Amen, Again. In 2012, she received
the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work
for fiction. The movie
version of Let The Church Say Amen
will premiere on BET Aug. 30. Her new book Mama’s
Boy deals with some of the most pressing social issues facing the United
States. During a scuffle with three black youths, a white police officer is
fatally shot and the accused boy’s heart-broken mother must find the faith and
courage to save her son.
Cat Cora made
television history on Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” as the first female
Iron Chef. Shortly thereafter, she became Executive Chef of Bon Appétit. She
comes to the AJC DBF to launch Cooking as
Fast As I Can, her remarkably candid memoir on Southern life, Greek
heritage and same sex marriage. She reveals coming-of-age experiences related
to early childhood sexual abuse, her solace found in cooking and the realities
of life as a lesbian in the Deep South.
Festival favorite Pat Conroy is back at the AJC DBF but
this time, someone is writing about him. Conroy is the best-selling author of The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides and South of Broad. In Understanding Pat Conroy, Catherine
Seltzer sketches Conroy’s biography and explores each of his major works.
As editor-at-large of Story River Books, Conroy also brings several of his
authors to the festival and will moderate two panels.
Noted science fiction author Samuel Delany’s work has won multiple Hugo and
Nebula Awards. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in
2002 and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America named him Damon
Knight Memorial Grand Master in 2013. His novels include Nova, Dhalgren, The Fall of the Towers, Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection; and also the four-volume fantasy series Return to Nevèrÿon.
He brings A, B, C: Three Short Novels, an omnibus volume of the first
three novels of his career, along with a new foreword and afterword.
Atlanta Chef Kevin Gillespie was named one of Mother
Nature Network’s “40 Chefs Under 40” and Gillespie also earned semifinalist status
for the James Beard Foundation’s Rising Star Chef of the Year Award for three
consecutive years. The owner of the highly acclaimed Gunshow in Atlanta has plans to open his second restaurant, Revival, in Decatur in 2015. In Pure
Pork Awesomeness, he shares his unbounded passion for pork in 100 unique
recipes with global flavors.
Christopher Moore has authored 15 satirical novels,
including Lamb, Fool, Sacré Bleu and A Dirty Job. He will bring his newest
work, Secondhand Souls, to the AJC
DBF. It is a delightfully funny sequel to A
Dirty Job. In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously
disappearing and it has something to do with a big orange bridge. To get to the
bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together and prepare
for the coming battle for the very soul of humankind.
Elizabeth
is a poet, essayist,
playwright and teacher. She was recently named a Chancellor of the Academy of
American Poets, as well as the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry
at Yale University. In 2009, she composed and delivered “Praise Song for the
Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. She comes to the AJC DBF
for her highly praised book Light of the
World, a memoir of her marriage and the sudden death of her husband.
Kent
and Amber Brantly moved
to Liberia in 2013 to provide medical care for people in great need. Less than
a year later, Kent contracted the deadly Ebola virus, receiving the diagnosis
just days after his family had returned to Texas. Called for Life tells the riveting story of Kent and Amber’s call
to serve their neighbors, as well as Kent’s fight for life against Ebola and
eventual triumph at Emory University Hospital, where he was the first person to
be treated for the disease in the United States.
Kevin Henkes is the author and illustrator of nearly
50 critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, beginning reader books
and novels. He won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten’s
First Full Moon and Newbery Honors for the middle-grade novels The Year of Billy Miller and Olive’s Ocean. He returns to the
festival to launch his newest picture book, Waiting,
a story of friendship and patience.
Matt
de la Peña began a career as a Children’s and Young Adult (YA) author
with the intent to help “young
readers acquire experience with complex emotions like empathy and sensitivity.”
He is the award-winning author of many novels including Ball Don’t Lie and We Were
Here. This year, he shares two new books: Last Stop on Market Street, a picture book depicting a grandparent
and grandchild’s shared view of a stroll through the city, and The Hunted, the follow-up to his
action-packed survival story, The Living.
Libba
Bray is the popular and best-selling author of many YA novels
including The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Beauty
Queens and the Michael L. Printz Award-winning Going Bovine. She returns to the AJC DBF with her new book Lair of Dreams, the follow up to The Diviners, which Entertainment Weekly
called an “ambitious
series-starter, deftly evoking the exuberance of 1920s city life and the evil
lurking beneath it.”
The AJC DBF continues to offer new and diverse
programming every year. Highlights include:
Springer
Mountain Cooking Stage moves to the heart of the festival
AJC DBF’s Cooking Stage moves front and center with its new
location at the corner of Ponce de Leon and Clairemont Avenues. The diverse
roster of food and cooking talents include area favorites Kevin Gillespie, Nathalie Dupree, Cynthia Graubart, Virginia Willis, Rebecca Lang, Hugh Acheson and Steven Satterfield. Dora Charles, the former chef at Savannah’s
legendary Lady & Sons, will perform demonstrations from her first cookbook,
which is launching at the festival. Media sensation Maangchi demos from her new book, Real Korean Cooking, and rising star Leanne Brown shows how you can eat well on $4 a day with Good and Cheap. Mark Essig and Barry
Estabrook talk about the history of pork and the current climate of the
commercial pork industry. Also new this year is the Georgia Grown Culinary
Village, which will surround the Springer Mountain Cooking Stage, where visitors
can peruse locally grown foods and artisan products from local organizations.
Personal
Journeys Track
This track will provide a forum for authors and
festival-goers to discuss their personal journeys through shared experiences.
Blending memoirs with works of narrative nonfiction, attendees can see the
wonder of recovery, transformation and redemption in Dangerous When Wet by Jamie
Brickhouse, Blackout by Sarah Hepola and Barefoot to Avalon by David
Payne. James Edward Mills’ The Adventure Gap provides unique
perspectives on race and how it affected his personal experiences; Barton Swaim provides a peek inside the
spin room of the modern politician in The
Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics; and Rita Gabis explores the complicated truth of her grandfather’s past
in A Guest Shooters’ Banquet: My
Grandfather’s SS Past, My Jewish Family, a Search for the Truth.
History
Track, sponsored by the Atlanta History Center
History has always proved a popular genre at the AJC DCF and
this year it is bigger and better with a new History Track, sponsored by the
Atlanta History Center. Attendees will hear discussions on topics ranging from
the Revolutionary War to the U.S. space program. Margaret Lazarus Dean explores the end of the Space Race. Fordlandia author Greg Grandin brings us his new history of one of the most
influential foreign policy architects of the past 50 years in Kissinger’s Shadow. Award-winning
journalist Pamela Newkirk reveals a
little-known episode in American history when an African man was used in a
human zoo exhibit in Spectacle: The
Astonishing Life of Ota Benga.
Roxane
Gay Track, sponsored by Mailchimp
2015 marks the second year the AJC DBF has offered an
author-curated track. This year, Gay, the provocative novelist, essayist,
champion Scrabble player and loyally followed thought leader, has chosen a
dynamic group of authors who will participate in lively, stimulating
discussions on topics ranging from social and economic justice to global
relations. Hear rising stars James
Hannaham and Angela Flournoy
explore social justice and discuss their respective new titles, Delicious Foods and The Turner House. Award-winning author Daniel José Older will moderate a panel of frank discussions about
publishing for people of color and include talents such as Saeed Jones. Popular novelist Randa
Jarrar moderates a panel including some of the newest female voices in
publishing, including Mari Naomi and
Kristin Valdez Quade. And, of
course, Gay herself will discuss her best sellers.
Festival-goers
will be able to write a novel with Memory
Makes Us, a project launched in 2013 by if:book Australia, a company that
explores new forms of digital literature. Bring your memory to the tent on the
MARTA plaza and watch as best-selling authors type it out on a vintage
typewriter and integrate it into an ongoing story. Watch as a novel takes
shape. Every keystroke will be displayed on video monitors and online as the
work builds throughout the day.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur
Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical (AJC DBF) is the largest independent book festival
in the country. Over Labor Day weekend (Sept. 4-6) tens of thousands from metro
Atlanta and beyond will share the historic Decatur Square with world-class
authors, illustrators, editors, publishers and booksellers for a weekend filled
with literature, music, food and fun. For more information, visit www.decaturbookfestival.com,“