Charleston Literary Festival
Be sure to check out this year’s Literary Festival. The speakers are varied and impressive. A few authors that stood out to me (copied from the downloaded program guide): For specific dates, go to the webpage featured at the end of the entry.
IMANI PERRY with Dr. Tamara Butler
SOUTH TO AMERICA 5 PM-6 PM
FREE / Circular Congregational Church • Live Event
(Online Reservation Required)
Imani Perry’s South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the
Soul of a Nation is a physical and intellectual travelogue. Journeying from
her home in the North to her roots in Alabama, she visits Southern
cities and towns, including Charleston. In the process, she weaves
together the rich tapestry of Black culture and asserts its contribution to
the identity of America. Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of
African American Studies at Princeton University. Join us as we follow
her through the history, rituals and landscapes of the South together
with Tamara Butler, Executive Director of the Avery Research Center for
African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston.
Charleston READS is presented by the Mayor’s Book Club, in
collaboration with the Charleston Literary Festival.
TINA BROWN and BETSY PRIOLEAU
with Amanda Foreman
PRESS AND PALACE 4 PM-5 PM
$35 / Circular Congregational Church • Live Event
Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers and Betsy Prioleau’s Diamonds and Deadlines
feature remarkable women, in different eras, dealing with power,
glamour, fame, scandal and intrigue. Despite flouting convention in
the Gilded Age, Miriam Leslie, self-styled “Empress of Journalism,”
wielded considerable influence through her numerous magazines.
The British Royal family, with the late Queen at the helm, had to
negotiate turbulent times and reinvent itself. Historian Amanda
Foreman teases out their allure. Tina Brown is the former editor
in chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and author of The Diana
Chronicles. Betsy Prioleau’s previous book is Swoon: Great Seducers and Why
Women Love Them.
EDDIE S. GLAUDE, JR. with Armand Derfner
JAMES BALDWIN’S AMERICA 2 PM-3 PM
$25 / Dock Street Theatre • Live Event
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent
Lessons for Our Own is a defining book for our time, an eloquent essay
that combines biography, literary and social criticism, and history
to make the argument that America stands on the precipice of a
decision about its identity. Baldwin’s life and writing serve as a
pathway for Glaude to examine his own experiences, beliefs and
feelings to interrogate racism in today’s America. He discusses the
insights and inspiration he has gained from Baldwin with Armand
Derfner, civil rights lawyer and co-author of Justice Deferred. Eddie
S. Glaude Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University
Professor and chair of the Department of African American
Studies at Princeton University
GERALDINE BROOKS
with Anne Blessing
HORSE 6 PM-7 PM
$25 / Dock Street Theatre • Live Event
In her sixth novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine
Brooks’ subject is the famed Kentucky thoroughbred Lexington,
king of the antebellum racetrack and beyond (he was the greatest
sire of his age), as well as an exploration of the racism on which the
horseracing industry was built. Although a triumphant feat of her
creative imagination, blending different time periods, art, science
and athleticism, many of the novel’s themes and characters are
based on fact. She discusses the passions that horses can inspire in
humans with Anne Blessing, horse-lover and Charleston Literary
Festival Board member.