Book conferences and festivals are a magical place for avid readers.
Not only do they get to share their love of the written word, but they also get to meet the men and women who stoke their imaginations and encourage, educate and entertain them.
More than 350 readers, representing more than 60 book clubs, will meet in Atlanta during the annual National Book Club Conference, which will be held Friday through Sunday at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel and Conference Center, 3405 Lenox Road.
A day pass is $20.
Authors scheduled to attend include Eric Jerome Dickey, Alysia Burton Steele, Kimberla Lawson Roby, Walter Mosley and Ruth Parrish Watson.
Curtis Bunn, a former journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, started the book conference in 2003 as a way to promote reading and to bring authors and their fans together in one space.
He said he spent nearly a year meeting with book clubs for his first novel, “Baggage Check.”
“I left each book club meeting feeling spirited and uplifted, like I do when I leave church — inspired and like I was better for the experience,” he said. “It struck me that someone ought to create an event where readers and authors could come together and have a succession of book club meetings as a way of enhancing the reading experience.”
On using book clubs to promote an author’s work:
“Book clubs are a driving force in the publishing industry. We love all readers, but if you get several book clubs reading your work, well, the math is pretty easy. Also, that experience of congregating with the groups and watching the different personalities emerge, the food, the laughs and the wine … you’re able to make a personal connection that you just cannot at a book signing.”
On what publishers and bookstores should know about the market for black authors:
“Black people in general and black women in particular read books. Obsessively. Many of the hundreds of book club members I have come to know are in more than one book club. They love to read stories that take them away from their everyday lives. They appreciate the craft. … And they are hurt by the lack of black bookstores and the lack of money committed to promoting black authors.”
What are you reading now?
"I'm not reading anything now. I'm working on a novel and a nonfiction book. I read Kevin Shird's 'Lessons of Redemption' to and from Italy in June, and it was an insightful memoir about a young man's evolution in Baltimore from a drug dealer to an advocate for youth."
About the Author
