River Jordan

The Dahlonega Literary Festival in the mountains of north Georgia was nice last weekend, if very sparsely attended. Alas, a lot goes on in the mountains in the fall, so the competition for everyone's time is fierce. The nice group who put the event on, though, was wonderful to spend a day with, though.

The most fortunate part for me was meeting the marvelously talented Tennessee writer River Jordan (shown here) and her husband Owen. We wound up sharing a gorgeous farmhouse in a valley north of Dahlonega. When I say farmhouse, I mean it literally. Cows came almost right up to the door. She and Owen arrived a day before I did, so they got to enjoy it more. The view was incomparable, especially Sunday morning, when the valley was filled like a bowl with icy mist.

I'd known about River for a long time but I was delighted to meet her and buy some of her books, which I'll read soon. (I had a great time talking football with Owen, but that's a story for another day.)

For someone who's last name is Williams (and I wear it with pride), a name like River Jordan seems too wonderful to be true, and it is her real name. But she wears it well, and what I've read of her work so far shows a master of wordcraft.

Check out her website at http://www.riverjordan.us/cgi-bin/index.cgi and buy some of her work. She's really worth getting to know!

Cover to Cover redux

I should have noted that while the Georgia Public Broadcasting Program on which I will be a guest Sunday is heard statewide at 8 p.m., it comes on WUGA in Athens at 6 p.m.

Have a happy and safe weekend, everyone.

In Dahlonega

I'll be a guest at the Dahlonega (Ga.) Literary Festival this weekend, and I'm so much looking forward to it! Go online and Google it and you'll find the entire schedule.

Begun in 2004 by Kate Quigley McElliott, the Dahlonega Literary Festival celebrates books, writers, literacy, storytelling, and literary performance art. Late in December, 2003, Kate called together a group of interested community and university people to begin The Dahlonega Literary Festival & Writer’s Conference. This year is the sixth installment, and with 14 writers present, it should be a lot of fun.

I'm too rushed today to cut and paste the entire schedule, but as I said it's easy to find online. Come out and see me!

PLW on "Cover to Cover" Sunday evening

Pardon the press release, but I'm going to be featured statewide on Georgia Public Broadcasting Sunday evening, and I wanted you to know about it:

ATHENS, Ga. – Noted Georgia writer Philip Lee Williams will be the guest on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Cover to Cover” program on Sunday evening, Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. The show will be heard on GPB’s statewide network of stations and can be heard as well in a streaming audio format on GPB’s website at http://www.gpb.org/radio.

Williams will talk about his latest novel The Campfire Boys, which is about camp entertainers in the American Civil War and southerners who were against the South’s position in the war.

“This is a special book to me, since it’s a large-scale comic novel set in a time of great horror and tragedy,” said Williams, who is assistant dean for public information in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. He is also an adjunct professor of creative writing at UGA. “It’s about three brothers who were very good entertainers but very bad soldiers. I think of it as sort of `the USO for the Blue and Gray.’”

The 30-minute program focuses on The Campfire Boys, the 14^th book in Williams’s career, but it also touches on many other aspects of the writing life. Williams will join such luminaries as Flannery O’Connor, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Dickey as a member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in March.

Interviewing Williams is Jesse Freeman, who grew up in Madison, Ga., as Williams did, and where he wrote for the hometown weekly, The Madisonian. He received a B. A. in English from Georgia State University in 2002, where he also studied film and video production. Since then, Freeman has worked as a freelance journalist and video producer in the Atlanta area. He is also a GPB-TV correspondent for Lawmakers and Prep Sports Plus. Documentary work on the late author Raymond Andrews landed him a speaking appearance at the 19th Annual Southern Writers’ Symposium in Fayetteville, N.C.

“Cover To Cover” is the anchor program for GPB’s literary coverage. After nearly a decade as a monthly, hour-long call-in program, it is now a 30-minute interview program airing each Sunday night at 8 p.m. “Cover To Cover” features a collection of distinctive Southern voices interviewing Georgia writers, Southern writers and writers dealing with the South. The program provides a weekly glimpse of fiction, non-fiction, history, poetry and more.

To find out more about Philip Lee Williams, visit his website at www.philipleewilliams.com.

Georgia Center for the Book

My good friend Terry Kay (right) and I will be the Decatur Library, in Decatur, Ga., on Monday evening Nov. 2 at 7 p.m in an event sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book.

We will have a conversation about books, writing, and the larger subject of literature, but we hope the audience will be a part of the evening as well.

Many people might not be aware of just how much the Georgia Center for the Book does, but you should know more. The wonderful Bill Starr is in charge of it, and few organizations have ever done more for books, readers, or writers in the state.

Come on out and visit with us!

On the radio and in Dahlonega

Hello all & I apologize for being such a sloggy blogger lately.

I continue to be extremely busy with The Campfire Boys. This morning I'll be taping an episode of "Cover to Cover," the Georgia Public Broadcasting book program on which I've been a guest a number of times in the past. I'll let you know when it's going to air.

Next up is the Dahlonega Book Festival, where I will be Nov. 6-8, doing readings, panel discussions and autographings. Dahlonega is one of my favorite towns in north Georgia, and if you're near, come over--lots of other authors and fun things to do. (Photo at right is of Dahlonega.)

I'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Athens on Nov. 29, the day after the Georgia Bulldogs defeat Georgia Tech in football.

Many other venues upcoming, and I'll keep you appraised of those. In the meantime, I'm happy to note that I'm being inducted into the UGA chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the national honor society, on Nov. 16 at the Chapel on North Campus. It's always nice to be honored by one's alma mater.

Rainy days and Mondays

It's pouring and cool here this morning and I flat love it.

I had a fine time in Nashville over the weekend at the Southern Festival of Books. The weather there was horrible for a mostly outdoor event--almost cold and misty. And I didn't know until five minutes before my panel that the other writer who was to have shared the stage wasn't coming.

Still, the crowd was good. I also managed to catch Buzz Aldrin's speech earlier, though it was so disorganized I found it impossible to follow. Still, who cared? I would have gone to hear him read from the phone book. He will turn 80 next year and still looks trim enough to fly a jet.

Nice to see Winterville writer Donny Seagraves and her daughter there. I also spent some time with the great southern writer Ron Rash.

My next event will be the Dahlonega Literary Festival and Writer's Conference in November. Here's the URL for the event: http://www.literaryfestival.org/.