Natasha Trethewey and BEYOND KATRINA on Fresh Air

On NPR's Fresh Air this Wednesday (8/18): Natasha Trethewey talks to Terry Gross about BEYOND KATRINA. For local airtimes, check here; the audio and an excerpt from the book will be posted online once the show airs.

AJC Decatur Book Festival September 3-5

The University of Georgia Press will be at the AJC Decatur Book Festival. You should be there too.

Visit our booth at the intersection of East Ponce de Leon Avenue and Clermont (next to Starbucks Coffee, and near the Old Courthouse) and consider stopping by for these or any of the festival's other marvelous, free events:

Poets Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, Thomas Lux, Kevin Young and David Bottoms discuss and read from Seriously Funny
Saturday, September 4
5:30 pm
First Baptist Decatur Carreker Hall Stage

The most fun poetry reading you have ever attended. Even better if it is the only poetry reading you have ever attended. Everyone's introduction to poetry should be like this.

Angie Mosier, Alan Deutschman and Tore Olsson present Cornbread Nation 5
Sunday, September 5
Noon
Cooks Warehouse Stage

SFA Board President Mosier and contributors Deutschman and Olsson talk country ham, the phenomenon that is Your Dekalb Farmer's Market, and the great work of the Southern Foodways Alliance.

Natasha Trethewey will launch Beyond Katrina
Sunday, September 5
1:15 pm
First Baptist Decatur Carreker Hall Stage

Trethewey, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, reads from her brand new nonfiction book, a very personal profile of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and of the people there whose lives were forever changed by hurricane Katrina.



Additional press authors appearing at the festival:

Rebecca Burns, author of Rage in the Gate City
Sunday, 1:15 pm, Decatur Conference Center Ballroom B

Emory Campbell, contributor to African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry
Saturday, 3 pm, City Hall Stage

Dana Johnson, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for Break Any Woman Down
Sunday, noon, Decatur Library Stage

Ellen Bryant Voigt, author of The Flexible Lyric
Saturday, 10 am, Decatur Conference Center Stage
Sunday, 3:15 pm, Decatur High School

Philip Lee Williams, author of Heart of a Distant Forest
John Lane, author of Circling Home
Sunday, 2:30 pm, Decatur Conference Center Ballroom B

Short Takes: Plenty of Shotgun Blasts

The September issue of Food and Wine features "Revelatory Caramel Cake" from the SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE COMMUNITY COOKBOOK.

Natasha Trethewey (BEYOND KATRINA) featured on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog. For Trethewey junkies, there's a great interview recently posted on Southern Spaces as part of their Poets in Place project.

Environmental History calls AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE, Jack Davis's book on Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a "significant biography of an amazing and influential woman . . . highly recommended reading for every environmental, Florida, literary and gender historian."

"Despite the complicated science involved in tick eradication the work is accessible and timely, especially considering the issues surrounding the proper extent of federal power. The narrative, with plenty of shotgun blasts and dynamite explosions alongside helpful maps, makes this work an engaging and worthwhile read": Southwestern Historical Quarterly on MAKING CATFISH BAIT OUT OF GOVERNMENT BOYS.

Warming up for new Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award winners, out next month: Minnesota Reads on the "powerful descriptive writing" in THE DANCE BOOTS and Caroline Leavitt on the "knockout" collection PLEASE COME BACK TO ME.

CORNBREAD NATION 5 (alongside books by Thomas Keller and Anthony Bourdain)in the food issue of the Atlantan (page 24-25).

Law and History Review on FATHERS OF CONSCIENCE: "...the inheritance rights of enslaved women and children have received little sustained attention. This neglect is remedied by this fine work."

Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award winners announced

Judging for this year's Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award is at last complete. Congratulations to the winning authors: Amina Gautier of Chicago, IL for her manuscript "At Risk" and Melinda Moustakis of Kalamazoo, MI for "Bear Down, Bear North." Both collections will be published by the University of Georgia Press and should be available next fall.

Meanwhile, the winning collections from last year's competition, THE DANCE BOOTS by Linda Legarde Grover and PLEASE COME BACK TO ME by Jessica Treadway, are very near release and will be available by September 15.

The award exists to help readers discover wonderful new writers and call attention to the short story as a worthy genre; it has led to the publication of more than fifty short story collections since 1983.

The judges named a runner up in this year's competition, E. J. Levy of Washington, DC. Congratulations also to this year’s finalists: L. Annette Binder of Los Angeles, CA; Charles Blackburn, Jr. of Raleigh, NC; William H. Coles of Salt Lake City, UT; Justin Courter of Sunnyside, NY; Valerie Fioravanti of Sacramento, CA; Natalie Harris of Waterville, ME; Nick Healy of Mankato, MN; Jeff P. Jones of Moscow, ID; Christiana Louisa Langenberg of Huxley, IA; Kelly Luce of Santa Cruz, CA; Michael McGuire of La Manzanilla de la Paz, Jalisco, Mexico; Robert McKean of Newton, MA; Janna McMahan of Columbia, SC; Nicholas Montemarano of Lancaster, PA; Maryanne O’Hara of Ashland, MA; Nicole Louise Reid of Newburgh, IN; Richard Sonnenmoser of Maryville, MO; Carol Test of Phoenix, AZ; Paul Vidich of New York, NY; Anthony Wallace of Brookline, MA; and Gregory Wolos of Alplaus, NY.