Pop Smart - Georgia Author Book Bash: Summer readings

Sunday offers us the first-ever Georgia Author Book Bash, presented by Atlanta magazine and the Literary Center of the Margaret Mitchell House. The event will take place from 4-7 p.m. at the Margaret Mitchell House. Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 members. Guests can schmooze with the LL (local literati) on the front lawn and wrestle them to the grass for an autograph. There’ll be hors d’oeuvres, live jazz (as opposed to dead jazz) and a cash bar.

One question: How the hell is anyone going to be able to meet and greet 50 authors, much less get their John Hancock on their books? Good luck trying.

The Big 50 in attendance is about as impressive a list of local authors as you’ll find this side of the AJC Decatur Book Festival, and even then. The names are so obvious and familiar, I’m almost embarrassed to mention them — although it does give me an excuse to provide cool hyperlinks to coverage of several of them. For example, there’s former CL Fiction Contest judges Joshilyn Jackson and David Fulmer, as well as Mike Luckovich, Bill Osinski, Ferrol Sams, Goldie Taylor and Tina McElroy Ansa. And of course there’s CL’s own Hollis Gillespie, whose new book, Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility, is due out Aug. 1.

It’s also a chance to check out our sleeper pick, Gay and Lesbian Atlanta, by Wesley Chenault and Stacy Braukman of the Atlanta History Center for Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series. It’s quite the trip down memory lane, broken down into four chapters/epochs: “Unconventional Lives and Ambiguous Identities: 1900-1940,” “Quiet Accommodation: 1940-1970,” “Parties, Politics, and Pride: 1970-1990” and “Collective Power and Culture Wars: 1990-2000.” Nice way to get in some infotainment before next week’s Atlanta Pride.

(Image courtesy Arcadia Publishing)