Author: pearc007

Tickets Available Online for the Alabama Writer’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Dinner 3/10/23

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.  — Eight distinguished authors will be inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame at The University of Alabama’s Bryant Conference Center on Friday, March 10th, 2023.  

The Alabama Center for the Book and the Alabama Writers’ Forum would like to congratulate the inductees. Members of the 2023 class include: Tom Franklin, Trudier Harris, Angela Johnson, Howell Raines, Michelle Richmond, and Daniel Wallace. Authors Eugene Walter and Kathryn Tucker Windham will be inducted posthumously. 2020 inductee Carolyn Haines is slated to serve as Master of Ceremonies.  

To purchase tickets online, or to sponsor an inductee table that seats 10 people, visit the link below.

Alabama Hall of Fame Dinner – AL Writers Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction (ua.edu) 

For press inquiries, please contact Jeanie Thompson, Executive Director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, at jeaniethompson@writersforum.org  or Michael Pearce, Director of the Alabama Center for the Book, at pearc007@ua.edu .

Past Is Present: A Conversation in Poetry

 

University Libraries, and the Alabama Center for the Book Present on September 9th, 2022 in the Camellia Room of Gorgas Library: Past Is Present; A Conversation in Poetry. Past Is Present is a unique event featuring three poets, Ashley M Jones, Poet Laureate of the State of Alabama, Jaqueline Allen Trimble, chairperson of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University, and Kwoya Fagin Maples, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alabama. The poets will have an improvisational conversation in which they can only use their poetry to communicate with one another. Following the conversation, the poets will debrief the exercise, and take questions from the audience.  

African Town, by Charles Waters and Irene Latham, Chosen as the 2022 Alabama Great Reads Selection


The Alabama Center for the Book has selected African Town, by Charles Waters and Irene Latham, to be featured as the Alabama Great Reads selection for the 2022 National Book Festival. This year’s theme is, “Books Bring Us Together.”

The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. The 22nd Library of Congress National Book Festival will be held Labor Day weekend, returning this year to the Washington Convention Center on Saturday, September 3rd. A selection of programs will be livestreamed, and video of all presentations can be viewed online after the Festival concludes. 

African Town is a novel-in-verse, chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860.

“In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they’d been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.”

–Penguin Random House

Every year, a list of books representing the literary heritage of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, is distributed by the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book during the National Book Festival.  Each book is selected by a Center for the Book state affiliate or state library and most are for children and young readers. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage.

The Alabama Center for the Book supports reading, literacy and other book-related activities in Alabama as well as promotes appreciation of regional writers.  The Center is a founding co-sponsor of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

The Library of Congress’ Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading, is a national force for reading and literacy promotion.  A public-private partnership, its sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through its Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit Read.gov.

 

2022 Alabama Writers Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction Ceremony Rescheduled for 2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.  — Eight distinguished authors will be inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame at The University of Alabama’s Bryant Conference Center on Friday, March 10th, 2023. Originally scheduled for June 6th, 2022, the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame Planning Committee decided that it would be in everyone’s best interest to reschedule the induction gala.

Michael Pearce, Director for the Alabama Center for the Book, noted in making the change, “We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are thinking of the health of our inductees and attendees, and the overall quality of the services we can provide.  We also want to ensure that the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame induction ceremony is a well-attended and meaningful evening for our inductees.”

The Alabama Center for the Book and the Alabama Writers’ Forum would like to congratulate the inductees. Members of the 2023 class include: Tom Franklin, Trudier Harris, Angela Johnson, Howell Raines, Michelle Richmond, and Daniel Wallace. Authors Eugene Walter and Kathryn Tucker Windham will be inducted posthumously. 2020 inductee Carolyn Haines is slated to serve as Master of Ceremonies. More information will be provided in the coming months.  

For press inquiries please contact please contact Jeanie Thompson, Executive Director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, at jeaniethompson@writersforum.org  or Michael Pearce, Director of the Alabama Center for the Book, at pearc007@ua.edu .

Join us virtually for SHELF LIFE—Music, Grace & Grit: Black Voices in Verse December 16th

Ashley M. Jones, Alabama poet laureate (Reparations Now!), Khalisa Rae (Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat), and Crystal Wilkinson (Perfect Black) confront their complex Southern inheritance, mourning the horrors of racism while celebrating the sweetness of Black love and language. Join us as they read from and discuss their latest collections with moderator Valencia Robin.

This virtual event is FREE to attend and open to the public. To attend, please register below to take part on Zoom or simply make plans to watch the livestream on Facebook.com/VaBookFest.

This event will offer closed captions and an accompanying live transcript using Zoom’s built-in automatic speech recognition software (ASR). To request live-captioning accommodations, please write vabook@virginia.edu no later than seven days before the event. A video recording from this event will be provided soon after completion and an accurate transcript will be available at a later date, at VaBook.org/watch

Click Here To Register

 

 

2021 National Book Festival Starts Friday 9/17/21 and runs through Sunday 9/26/21

Great Reads From Great Places

The 2021 Library of Congress National Book Festival starts Friday 9/17. 

Author Rick Bragg, whose book, The Speckled Beauty is the 2021 Alabama Great Reads, will be featured in an author panel that can be accessed here on Monday 9/20 Great Reads from Great Places .

You can create your own Festival experience from a variety of programs and formats with an expanded schedule over 10 days, Sept. 17-26.

You can:

Genres

Author events and videos are all organized into one of the following genres:

Authors & Moderators

Explore the full lineup of authors, check out their biographies and discover their featured books.

Learn more about our moderators.

Meet the Library of Congress experts hosting special interactive presentations.

Programs & Schedule

The 2021 National Book Festival takes place Sept. 17-26, with a variety of programs and formats. On Sept. 17 at 10 a.m. ET, 35 video-on-demand programs will become available to watch anytime. The full Festival schedule of live programs features 38 virtual author conversations, nine audience Q&A sessions for children and teens, two in-person events with simultaneous livestreaming, and five interactive presentations with Library of Congress experts. This year, the Festival also features a national television special and related events on PBS, NPR podcasts, and author interviews on Washington Post Live. You can also explore events closer to home with the Festival Near You, which features related programs from local organizations and affiliate Centers for the Book.

All programs livestreaming from the National Book Festival website will be held Sept. 17-26, between noon and 8 p.m. ET on weekends and between 3 and 8 p.m. ET on weekdays. All live programs will include time at the end for audience Q&A. Only one program will livestream at any given time, meaning this year you won’t need to make any tough choices on which program to attend! Check out the schedule online or download a printable pdf (PDF 895KB).

Rick Bragg’s The Speckled Beauty selected to be featured at the 2021 National Book Festival

The Alabama Center for the Book has selected The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Alabama author Rick Bragg to be featured as the Alabama Great Reads selection for the 2021 National Book Festival.    

The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. The 21st Library of Congress National Book Festival will be a 10-day event with the theme, “Open a Book, Open the World,” running from Sept. 17-26. The, “Great Reads from Great Places,” portion of the festival will be held virtually again this year and broadcast through various web-based venues which will be announced in August.

The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People  is the warm hearted and story of how Rick Bragg’s life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog:

“Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg’s house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick’s life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg’s inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal,”

–Penguin Random House

Every year, a list of books representing the literary heritage of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, is distributed by the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book during the National Book Festival.  Each book is selected by a Center for the Book state affiliate or state library and most are for children and young readers. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage.

The Alabama Center for the Book supports reading, literacy and other book-related activities in Alabama as well as promotes appreciation of regional writers.  The Center is a founding co-sponsor of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

The Library of Congress’ Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading, is a national force for reading and literacy promotion.  A public-private partnership, its sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through its Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit Read.gov.

 

Announcing the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame Class of 2022

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.  — Eight distinguished authors will be inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame at The University of Alabama’s Bryant Conference Center on Monday, June 6th, 2022.

The 2022 class inductees include Tom Franklin, Trudier Harris, Angela Johnson, Howell Raines, Michelle Richmond, and Daniel Wallace. Authors Eugene Walter and Kathryn Tucker Windham will be inducted posthumously. 

2020 inductee Carolyn Haines is slated to serve as Master of Ceremonies. More information will be provided in the coming months. The Alabama Center for the Book and the Alabama Writers’ Forum would like to congratulate the members of the 2022 class. 

For press inquiries please contact please contact Jeanie Thompson, Executive Director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, at jeaniethompson@writersforum.org  or Michael Pearce, Director of the Alabama Center for the Book, at pearc007@ua.edu .

Environmental Injustice: Reckoning with American Waste

Alabama author Catherine Coleman Flowers will participate in the upcoming Virginia Festival of the Book in a virtual panel discussion entitled:
 
Environmental Injustice: Reckoning with American Waste
 
Saturday March 20th from 7-8pm EST
 
You can also check out the many other virtual events offered by the Virginia Festival of the Book to be held March 13-26, 2021 by visiting https://vabook.org/festival-info/
 
For more information and to register to attend virtually please visit the link below.

Children’s Book by Charles Ghigna selected to be featured at the 2020 National Book Festival

The Alabama Center for the Book has selected The Night the Forest Came to Town , by Alabama author Charles Ghigna to be featured as the Alabama Great Reads selection for the 2020 National Book Festival .    

The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. The 20th Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate “American Ingenuity” in 2020, featuring the creativity and inspiration of some of the nation’s most gifted authors in a re-imagined virtual festival the weekend of Sept. 25-27. The event will be held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, broadcast through various web based venues which will be announced in August.

The Night the Forest Came to Town , “sings the story of a paved parking lot returning to a paradise teeming with diverse people, plants, and animals. It begins with an illustration of distracted townspeople scurrying across gray streets on a summer evening. The children, full of wide-eyed wonder, notice the wind blowing in something new…” (Kirkus Reviews,  2018).  With beautiful and engaging illustrations as backdrop, Ghigna takes reader’s on a lyrical journey from drab grey concrete living, to vibrant urban renewal.   

Every year, a list of books representing the literary heritage of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, is distributed by the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book during the National Book Festival.  Each book is selected by a Center for the Book state affiliate or state library and most are for children and young readers. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage.

The Alabama Center for the Book supports reading, literacy and other book-related activities in Alabama as well as promotes appreciation of regional writers.  The Center is a founding co-sponsor of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

The Library of Congress’ Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading, is a national force for reading and literacy promotion.  A public-private partnership, its sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through its Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit Read.gov.