Greetings from the Georgia Center for the Book

We hope you all are having a wonderful summer and making a dent in your "To Be Read" stacks! Be sure to check out the Summer Reading Program at your local library-it's not too late to sign up. Learn more about DCPL's Summer Reading on Beanstack. All ages welcome!

Our July and August events are up on our website. Unfortunately our event on Monday, July 10th, has been postponed. We will welcome Stacy Jane Grover to discuss her new book Tar Hollow Trans: Essays at a future date this fall. Stay tuned! In the meantime, we are very excited for the rest of our upcoming line-up. Our special series of one-night-only performances (and this time, one performance only, we swear!) for the Theatre in your Mind continues on July 20th in the Fourth Floor Gallery. This second event features Daryl Fazio reading "Elizabeth Quick." Elizabeth used to be a wife, a writer, and one time she took a kickboxing class. But she never considered herself powerful. Until an extinction event left behind a wild and wondrous new planet, equal parts dangerous and astonishing. Now Elizabeth, searching for her teenage daughter, finds herself alone in those wilds and is realizing that, just like the animals she sees evolving in the blink of an eye, she must become someone she never thought possible. To create an intimate theatre experience, seating in the Gallery is limited. Registration is strongly encouraged. This series will be once a month, now through November. Learn more and register for future events here. If you subscribe to the AJC, you can read about the series here.

We have an evening with local favorite Vanessa Riley on July 24th for her new novel, Queen of Exiles, which is the tale of a remarkable Black woman of history: the passionate, regal Marie-Louise Christophe. Marie-Louise was the wife and then widow of King Henry I, and she jointly ruled the newly liberated Kingdom of Hayti, guiding the nation's renaissance until it fell to a violent uprising. Learn more here.

Then finally, on July 25th, Anthony J. Martin will be here to discuss his book Life Sculpted: Tales of the Animals, Plants, and Fungi That Drill, Break, and Scrape to Shape the Earth. With vast knowledge and no small amount of whimsy, Anthony uses paleontology, biology, and geology to reveal the awesome power of life’s chewing force. He provokes us to think deeply about the past and present of bioerosion while also considering how knowledge of this history might aid us in mitigating and adapting to climate change in the future. Registration requested.

Have you checked out our 2023 lists of Books All Georgians and Young Georgians Should Read? We hope you find some new books to love! We'll be highlighting one book from each list for every month from now until November in our newsletter and on our website. Scroll for resources and information about this month's featured books.

Revisit many of our previous programs on our YouTube channel, such as the just added event with Rachel E. Cargle in conversation with Myleik Teele for Cargle's A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining In Person. Visit our Eventbrite page and website, or follow us on social media (links above), to learn about our upcoming events.

We'll see you at the library!

Ally StoneWright, Program Assistant

and

Joe Davich, Executive Director

The Georgia Center for the Book

Tar Hollow Trans
with Stacy Jane Grover

Unfortunately, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. Stay tuned for the new date.

Written in Water: Daryl Fazio Reads "Elizabeth Quick"

Join us for a series of unique, one-time-only performances for the Theatre in your Mind in the 4th Floor Gallery of the Decatur Library. Our second event in the series features Daryl Fazio reading "Elizabeth Quick." Elizabeth used to be a wife, a writer, and one time she took a kickboxing class. But she never considered herself powerful. Until an extinction event left behind a wild and wondrous new planet, equal parts dangerous and astonishing. Now Elizabeth, searching for her teenage daughter, finds herself alone in those wilds and is realizing that, just like the animals she sees evolving in the blink of an eye, she must become someone she never thought possible. To create an intimate theatre experience, seating in the Gallery is limited. Registration is strongly encouraged.

Daryl Lisa Fazio (she/her) is a writer, actor, and designer based in Atlanta, GA. Her plays and musicals have been produced off-Broadway as well as professional regional theaters from Florida to Maine. She has written commissions for Horizon Theatre and Emory University and has been awarded opportunities at the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, the Alliance Theatre, and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Developmental workshops: Barter Theatre, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Actor’s Express Threshold Festival, Synchronicity Theatre SHEwrites, Florida Rep PlayLab, and more. During the pandemic, Daryl wrote her first novel, which she has since turned into a self-produced serial fiction podcast called Pearl River Remains. She likes rescue dogs and cats and has a lot of them. darylsplays.com

July Featured books

Books All Georgians and Young Georgians Should Read

Our featured adult book for July is A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey through an Endangered Land by Dan Chapman. In 1867, John Muir set out on foot to explore the botanical wonders of the South. One hundred and fifty years later, on a similar whim, veteran Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman recreated Muir’s journey to see for himself how nature has fared since Muir’s time. A Road Running Southward is part travelogue, part environmental cri de coeur, and paints a picture of a South under siege. It is a passionate appeal, a call to action to save one of the loveliest and most biodiverse regions of the world by understanding what we have to lose if we do nothing. Read an interview with Dan here.

Our featured July book for Young Georgians is Futureland: Battle for the Park by H.D. Hunter. When an extraordinary flying theme park arrives above Atlanta, one boy must stop a sinister force from stealing the park’s tech and taking over the world. An electrifying illustrated series with the Afrofuturism of Black Panther that took the world by storm. Perfect for fans of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Listen to the author read the first chapter here.

Check out the full 2023 lists of Books All Georgians and Young Georgians Should Read here.