DeKalb County Public Library - Next week: Ayana Gray on Wednesday, followed by the return of YATL in person on Saturday, July 30th

Next week: Ayana Gray on Wednesday, followed by the return of YATL in person on Saturday, July 30th! Also check out our new website

Greetings from the Georgia Center for the Book -

If you have visited GeorgiaCenterfortheBook.org this week, you may have noticed some changes . . . it's a brand new website! This has been a project behind-the-scenes for a very long time, and we are so excited to finally share it with you! We owe a special thanks to Jimmy Lo and Jerri Wilson of DeKalb County Public Library, as well as our own Programming Assistant, Ally StoneWright. We will continue adding more in the coming days (including a refresh and update of the Georgia Authors Page), but we hope you'll take some time to explore the new website—read about our history, check out the ongoing programs, and register for our upcoming events!

Thank you to everyone who attended last night's "From Lost Boys to Accomplished Men: South Sudanese Writers," a panel discussion and reading featuring Abraham Deng Ater, Majok Marier, and Bishop Abraham Yel Nhial, with Estelle Ford-Williamson as moderator. It was a powerful conversation, and we're lucky to bring this type of programming to you with the help of our partners at First Baptist Church of Decatur.

We have some fabulous YA events this week, including one with Little Shop of Stories on July 27, 2022. Ayana Gray with be in conversation with Roshani Chokshi for Ayana's new book Beasts of Ruin, the anxiously awaited sequel to her debut smash hit fantasy novel, Beasts of Prey. Join us in the Decatur Library Auditorium for an evening full of mythical beasts, amazing authors, terrible and great deities of old, and new favorite books! Register here.

Then, on July 30, 2022, YATL is back!! Join the summer fun and celebrate the launch of Serena Kaylor's LONG STORY SHORT in YATL style with games, giveaways & Author Truth or Dare. Serena will be joined by Kristin Dwyer, Kimberly Latrice Jones, Kelly Quindlen, and Julian Winters. This event will be in the Decatur Library Auditorium and is in partnership with Brave & Kind Books. Learn more and register here. You won't want to miss this!

The Georgia Poetry in the Parks summer signs are on the trails now! If you missed the kickoff reading, featuring several of the summer poets, you may check it out here. If you're in the Atlanta area, visit the Georgia Poetry in the Parks signs in Decatur's Glenlake Park, on the Michelle Obama Trail, or at Arabia Mountain. Take pictures and use the hashtag #GApoetryintheparks so we can see them! Visit georgiapoetryintheparks.org to learn more about the project and follow it on Instagram. Maps for each trail are also now on the website!

Scroll for information about the July featured books from the 2022 Books All Georgians and All Young Georgians Should Read lists! The featured adult book is Chas­ing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Mem­oir of the Jim Crow South, a memoir writ­ten by Win­fred Rem­bert, as told to Erin I. Kel­ly, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biog­ra­phy in 2022. The featured Young Georgians book is Run: Book 1, the first in the new graphic novel series written by Congressman John Lewis and published posthumously.

Visit our Eventbrite page, our BRAND NEW website, and follow us on social media (links above) to learn more about our upcoming events. Our previous virtual programs are available to watch on our YouTube channel (including the 2022 Joshilyn Jackson Reads programs), and you can subscribe to receive alerts when the latest videos are uploaded.

Have a great weekend, and we'll see you online and in person!

Ally StoneWright, Program Assistant

and

Joe Davich, Executive Director

The Georgia Center for the Book

Ayana Gray (Beasts of Ruin)
in conversation with Roshani Chokshi

Wednesday, July 27, 2022
7:00 p.m. ET
Decatur Library Auditorium

Join Little Shop of Stories and the Georgia Center for the Book for Ayana Gray and Roshani Chokshi discuss Ayana's newest YA release, Beasts of Ruin—the anxiously awaited sequel to her debut smash hit fantasy novel, Beasts of Prey! It'll be an evening full of mythical beasts, amazing authors, terrible and great deities of old, and new favorite books! This event will be in-person at the Decatur Library Auditorium. Masks strongly encouraged. Registration required. Read more and register on Eventbrite.

About the book: Koffi has saved her city and the boy she loves, but at a terrible price. Now a servant to the cunning god of death, she must use her newfound power to further his continental conquest, or risk the safety of her home and loved ones. As she reluctantly learns to survive amidst unexpected friends and foes, she will also have to choose between the life—and love—she once had, or the one she could have, if she truly embraces her dangerous gifts. Cast out from the only home he’s ever known, Ekon is forced to strike new and unconventional alliances to find and rescue Koffi before it’s too late. But as he gets closer to the realm of death each day, so too does he draw nearer to a terrible truth—one that could cost everything. Koffi and Ekon—separated by land, sea, and gods—will have to risk everything to reunite again. But the longer they’re kept apart, the more each of their loyalties are tested. Soon, both may have to reckon with changing hearts—and maybe, changing destinies.

About the author: Ayana Gray is a New York Times bestselling young adult fantasy author and a lover of all things monsters, mythos, and magic. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, she now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she reads avidly, follows Formula One racing, and worries over the varying moods of her adopted baby black rhino, Apollo, and her mini goldendoodle, Dolly. Her debut novel, Beasts of Prey, is being adapted for feature film.

YATL Summer Party
A Panel Discussion

Saturday, July 30, 2022
6:30 p.m. ET
Decatur Library Auditorium

Join the summer fun and celebrate the launch of Serena Kaylor's LONG STORY SHORT in YATL style with Games, Giveaways & Author Truth or Dare! In this sparkling debut from Serena Kaylor, Long Story Short is a YA rom-com about a homeschooled math genius who finds herself out of her element at a theater summer camp and learns that life—and love—can’t be lived by the (text)book. Several special guests will be there! Learn more and register here.

About the book: Gowing up homeschooled in Berkeley, California, Beatrice Quinn is a statistical genius who has dreamed her whole life of discovering new mathematical challenges at a school like Oxford University. She always thought the hardest part would be getting in, not convincing her parents to let her go. But while math has always made sense to Beatrice, making friends is a problem she hasn’t been able to solve, so her parents are worried about sending her halfway across the world. The compromise: the Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy and a detailed list of teenage milestones to check off. She has six weeks to show her parents she can pull off the role of "normal" teenager and won't spend the rest of her life hiding in a library. Unfortunately, hearts and hormones don't follow any rules, and there is no equation for teenage interactions. When she's adopted by a group of eclectic theater kids, and immediately makes an enemy of the popular—and, annoyingly gorgeous—British son of the camp founders, she realizes that relationships are trickier than calculus. With her future on the line, this girl genius stumbles through illicit parties, double dog dares, and more than your fair share of Shakespeare. But before the final curtain falls, will Beatrice realize that there’s more to life than she can find in the pages of a book?

Resources for Featured Books
July 2022

Chas­ing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Mem­oir of the Jim Crow South, a memoir writ­ten by Win­fred Rem­bert, as told to Erin I. Kel­ly, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biog­ra­phy in 2022. Vivid, con­fronta­tion­al, rev­e­la­to­ry, and com­plex, Chas­ing Me to My Grave is a sear­ing mem­oir in prose and paint­ed leather that cel­e­brates Black life and sum­mons read­ers to con­front painful and urgent real­i­ties at the heart of Amer­i­can his­to­ry and soci­ety. Chas­ing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breath­tak­ing body of work along­side his sto­ry, as told to Tufts Philoso­pher Erin I. Kel­ly. Watch our event with Win­fred’s wid­ow, Pat­sy Rem­bert, and Erin I. Kel­ly here.

Run: Book One is a graph­ic nov­el writ­ten by Con­gress­man John Lewis. Watch the book trail­er here. Run is the sequel to the #1 New York Times best­selling graph­ic nov­el series March—the con­tin­u­a­tion of the life sto­ry of John Lewis and the strug­gles seen across the Unit­ed States after the Sel­ma vot­ing rights cam­paign. In Run: Book One, John Lewis and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Andrew Aydin reteam with Nate Pow­ell — the award – win­ning illus­tra­tor of the March tril­o­gy — and are joined by L. Fury — mak­ing an aston­ish­ing graph­ic nov­el debut — to tell this often over­looked chap­ter of civ­il rights his­to­ry.

HELPING OUR LIBRARY GROW