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Southern Voices 2018

Southern Voices Festival 2018

A Celebration of Writing, Music and Art

Unfortunately, Steve Berry has come down with the flu and is unable to make the trip to Hoover. Fortunately for us, Saturday Author Conference author Andrew Gross has agreed to headline Friday’s event. Steve and Andrew are good friends and write very similar novels, so fans of Steve will not be disappointed. Andrew Gross will also speak on Saturday for the Author Conference where he will offer a different presentation.

We hope that you still plan to join us on Friday night to hear Andrew Gross speak. If you choose to not attend the Friday night event and would like a refund or would like to donate your ticket back to the Library, please contact the Library Theatre Box Office at 444-7888.

Steve sends his sincere regrets and we apologize for any inconvenience.

An Evening With

Steve Berry

Former trial lawyer and Southern Voices alumnus, Steve Berry, is the New York Times #1 internationally best-selling author of more than 15 novels and four e-book originals.  Known for his historical thrillers, Berry’s latest is no exception. The Lost Order, the 12th Cotton Malone novel, tells the story of the Knights of the Golden Circle and is described by Barnes & Noble as an “expert melding of nail-biting political intrigue and fascinating historical mystery.”  With his wife, Elizabeth, Berry founded History Matters, a foundation dedicated to historic preservation. Berry was named spokesperson for the Alabama Library Association’s National Preservation Week in 2012 and 2013.  In 2017, Berry was honored as the Writer of the Year by the Florida Writers Association and was named a Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Book Festival.  His next Cotton Malone novel, The Bishop’s Pawn, is due out in March 2018.

Steve Berry's Website
Steve Berry on Facebook

Authors Conference

Saturday, Feb. 24 - Registration: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm - The Library Theatre & The Library Plaza- Book sales and signings will follow the afternoon session. - Lunch on your own

Plaza Tickets:

Theatre Tickets:

Taylor Brown

Taylor Brown is the author of three novels including Fallen Land, The River of Kings and Gods of Howl Mountain (March 2018).  Library Journal calls River of Kings an “intense, solidly written story of family loyalty, Southern traditions, and haunting historic landscapes.”  The story of two brothers traveling down Georgia’s Altamaha River to scatter their father’s ashes alternates with scenes from the river’s past in the 1560s and is praised by Kirkus Reviews as a “literary achievement . . . powerful in concept and execution.”

Recording: 
Taylor Brown's Website
Taylor Brown on Twitter
Taylor Brown on Facebook
Taylor Brown on Amazon
Taylor Brown on Good Reads

Kelly Grey Carlisle

Kelly Grey Carlisle is the author of We Are All Shipwrecks, a memoir of her unique upbringing and search for what happened to her mother who was murdered when she was three weeks old. In its starred review, Library Journal describes her debut work as an “exquisitely written tale of perseverance and unconditional love.” Carlisle currently teaches nonfiction writing at Trinity University and is the editor of 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

Recording: 
Kelly Grey Carlisle's Website

Andrew Gross

Andrew Gross is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 suspense novels, including the recent World War II historical thrillers The One Man and The Saboteur. His latest, The Saboteur, is an espionage story based on the true story of the British and Norwegian raid that ended the Nazi efforts to acquire the atomic bomb. Known for his international best sellers including The One Man, One Mile Under and Eyes Wide Open, Gross is also the coauthor of five #1 best sellers with James Patterson.

Recording: 

Andrew Gross's Website

Lisa Ko

Lisa Ko’s debut novel The Leavers tells the story of Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant who never returns home from work one day, and her son, Deming, who is adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors and renamed Daniel. Winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize and nominated for the 2017 National Book Award, Ko’s novel echoes today’s current events such that Time.com feels that the book is as “relevant as ever as the future of immigrants in America hangs in the balance.”

 

Lisa Ko's Website
Lisa Ko on Facebook
Lisa Ko on Twitter
Lisa Ko on Instagram

Paula McLain

Paula McLain is the author of the New York Times international best sellers, The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun. Known for her historical fiction, McLain’s latest novel Circling the Sun tells the fictionalized story of Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West. Filled with Markham’s adventures in Kenya in the 1920s as a racehorse trainer, the novel explores themes of freedom, independence, love and friendship.

Paula McLain's Website
Paula McLain on Facebook
Paula McLain on Instagram

Daren Wang

Daren Wang is the founder of the Decatur Book Festival, the largest independent book festival in the country now in its 12th year. The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is his debut novel and is based on the true history of the only secessionist town north of the Mason Dixon Line. Southern Voices alumnus Ron Rash calls it a “wise and timely book” while the Richmond Times-Dispatch praises it for “rais[ing] questions of race and gender and deliver[ing] an emotional knockout.”

Recording: 
Daren Wang's Website
Daren Wang on Facebook
Daren Wang on Twitter

Stephanie Powell Watts

Born in the foothills of North Carolina, Stephanie Powell Watts’s fiction explores the lives of African Americans in small towns in the post-integration South. Her first novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us was named one of the best books of 2017 by Entertainment Weekly, Bustle and The Chicago Review of Books. It was also chosen by Sarah Jessica Parker as the inaugural selection for the American Library Association’s Book Club Central. Often described as The Great Gatsby recast in the contemporary South, The Washington Post says that Watts has written a “complex novel that’s entirely her own.”

 

Recording: 
Stephanie Powell Watts's Website

Lisa Wingate

Lisa Wingate is the New York Times best-selling author of 30 novels. Her latest novel, Before We Were Yours has garnered much political acclaim and has been touted by People as “a poignant, engrossing tale about sibling love and the toll of secrets.” Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals, the novel tells the story of Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization that kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country from the 1930s through the 1940s.

Lisa Wingate's Website
Lisa Wingate on Twitter
Lisa Wingate on Facebook
Lisa Wingate on Pinterest

Concert Event

The Roosevelts

“. . . HEARTFELT SONGS WITH REAL GUTS POISED BETWEEN THE QUIET TENDERNESS OF MY MORNING JACKET AND THE BALLADS OF JOHN MAYER.” ~ TRIBEZA MAGAZINE

Indie-rock/pop band, The Roosevelts, have cultivated a sound that’s a little bit bluesy, a little bit pop and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. When forced to give it a name, the boys will tell you it’s “harmony-driven American rock with a ‘70s sensibility.” Other tastemakers are describing their sound as “warm, rootsy pop”. The release of their first EP “Cold Sheets” in late 2013 garnered the attention of several music industry execs, prompting the band to move from Austin, TX to Nashville, TN. The release of their debut album in April 2016, The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn, reached #5 on iTunes singer/songwriter charts, placing them among some of their earliest childhood musical heroes and inspirations. The band packed their schedule with a run of at-capacity shows with acts like Robert Earl Keen and Grace Potter, as well as festivals such as South by Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits Festival. Birmingham native and lead guitarist, Jason Kloess, and new lead singer, Mitchell Kilpatrick, provide a rousing, dance-worthy compilation of songs and poignant tunes that leave concert-goers smiling and dancing in the aisles – making The Roosevelts a band that music fans of any genre can’t afford to miss.

Tickets $27.50

Wednesday, February 21 • 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, February 22 • 7:30 p.m.


The Art of

A History of Southern Photography

FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE DO GOOD FUND

Opening Reception:  Tuesday, February 20 • 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.  Lecture by photographer Baldwin Lee • 6:00 p.m.
Theatre Level

The Do Good Fund, Inc. is a public charity based in Columbus, Georgia. Since its founding in 2012, the fund has focused on building a museum-quality collection of photographs taken in the American South since World War II. The collection ranges from works by more than a dozen Guggenheim Fellows to images by less well-known emerging photographers working in the region.

Do Good’s mission is to make its collection of over 500 images broadly accessible through regional museums, nonprofit galleries and nontraditional venues, and to encourage complimentary, community-based programming to accompany each exhibition.

Baldwin Lee taught photography at the University of Tennessee Knoxville for 32 years.  He received an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied with Minor White, and a graduate degree from the Yale School of Art, where he studied with Walker Evans.

Lee’s work in photography has been shown widely in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work has been recognized by the award of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Baldwin Lee produced a body of work that is among the most remarkable in American photography of the past half century.”
~Time Magazine

 

The Do Good Fund Website
The Do Good Fund on Instagram