The Lit Center at the Margaret Mitchell House offers a variety of lectures throughout the year showcasing award-winning authors who share insight into their latest publication.
Admission for all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and FREE to Annual Fund donors, unless otherwise noted. All lecture ticket purchases are non-refundable.
Reservations are requested for all lectures. For more information please call 404.814.4150.
The Lit Center at the Margaret Mitchell House
990 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
September | November | December
Sara Gruen
Ape House
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
7:00 PM
Sara Gruen, the bestselling author of Water for Elephants, returns with another engaging novel in which a family of apes teaches us what it means to be human. When a family of Bonobo apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA. Ape House is a deeply moving new novel that secures Sara Gruen’s place as a master storyteller who allows us to see ourselves as we never have before.
Joseph Skibell
A Curable Romantic
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
7:00 PM
As far as romance goes, Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn is fairly incurable. Twice married, once divorced, once widowed, he flees his small village and his pious father all by the age of twelve. Young Dr. Sammelsohn is a lovelorn Candide wandering optimistically through modern history. Along the way, the amorous ghost of his wife—whom he abandoned on their wedding day—pursues and haunts him. A Curable Romantic is a novel of personal and historical exile that is often fantastical yet always grounded in tradition and history.
Joseph Skibell is the author of A Blessing on the Moon. He teaches at Emory University and is the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature.
Back to Top
Lit Center Presents: Breakfast with Condoleezza Rice
This lecture is held at Atlanta History Center
Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
8:00 AM Breakfast, 9:00 AM Lecture and Booksigning
Spend the morning at the Atlanta History Center for a special breakfast program with one of the most influential women of our time, Condoleezza Rice, as she shares stories from her new memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family. Rice recounts growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s, during the turbulent civil rights era and how her parents’ love and support encouraged her not to set limits on what she could achieve. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s battle with cancer and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this candid account. This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told – not that of an accomplished world leader, but of a little girl and a young woman trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, and of two exceptional parents and an extended family and community that made all the difference.
Condoleezza Rice was the sixty-sixth United States Secretary of State and the first black woman to hold the office. Prior, she was the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. She currently teaches at Stanford University.
This Lecture is presented by the Literary Center at Margaret Mitchell House and will be held at the Atlanta History Center. Admission is $35 for members; $40 for nonmembers. Ticket includes coffee and light pastries and an autographed copy of Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family. Reservations are required. To make a reservation or receive more information, call 404.814.4150
Amy Sedaris
Simple Times
Presented by the Literary Center at Margaret Mitchell House
This lecture is held at Atlanta History Center
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
7:00 PM
According to Amy Sedaris, it’s often been said that ugly people craft and attractive people have sex. In her new book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People, she sets the record straight. Demonstrating that crafting is one of life’s more pleasurable and constructive leisure activities, Sedaris shows that anyone with a couple of hours to kill and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters.
Amy Sedaris hails from North Carolina and studied and performed with Chicago’s Second City. She has appeared in film, television, and stage productions, and is the bestselling author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.
Admission is $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers. Ticket includes an autographed copy of Simple Times.
Jill McCorkle
Going Away Shoes
Friday, November 12, 2010
7:00 PM
Jill McCorkle’s world is populated by people whose foibles are so familiar that we want nothing so much as to watch them walk into—and then out of—life’s inevitable traps. In Going Away Shoes, she collects eleven new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight. Shoes figure largely in these stories of confronting the complications of love—honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, glass slippers—as all the characters march to a place of new awareness, and, in one way or another, transform their lives.
Jill McCorkle is the author of eight previous books, five of which have been selected as New York Times Notable Books. She teaches writing at North Caroline State University.
Fannie Flagg
I Still Dream About You
Monday, November 22, 2010
7:00 PM
Though her friends think Maggie has the perfect life, she is actually perfectly miserable. The former Miss Alabama is worried about how her life has turned out—she’s given up on her dream of living in a beautiful home, and instead is a real estate agent in Birmingham. But just when Maggie begins to wonder if there is much point in going on, her life takes a wild turn, and she finds herself catapulted into one surprising discovery after the next. As Maggie learns valuable lessons about the nature of friendship, the challenges of modern life, and the dangers of impossible dreams, she starts to see how much more there is to life than what can be listed in a Miss Alabama bio.
Fannie Flagg is a bestselling author as well as an actress, TV producer, speaker, and performer. Her book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café became a bestseller, as well as a heart-winning major motion picture.
Back to Top
Anita Shreve
Rescue
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
7:00 PM
Peter Webster is a rookie paramedic when he pulls a young woman out of a car wreck that should have killed her. Sheila haunts his thoughts, and despite his misgivings, Peter is soon embroiled in an intense love affair. Nineteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone—until a phone call from Sheila alters their quiet existence, bringing long-buried questions back to the surface. A story about trespass and forgiveness, secrets and the seismic force of the truth, Rescue is a masterful portrayal of a family trying to understand its own fractured past and begin again.
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of 15 previous novels, including A Change in Altitude, Testimony, and The Pilot’s Wife, which was an Oprah Book Club selection.
Back to Top
Brad Meltzer
The Inner Circle
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
7:00 PM
Benjamin January is a young archivist who works at the National Archives with the most important documents of the U.S. government. His childhood crush, Clementine Kaye, then shows up at the archives asking him to help find her long-lost father. To impress her, Benjy shows Clementine the secret vault where the president of the United States reviews classified documents. It is also where Benjy and Clementine accidentally discover a priceless artifact hidden inside a desk chair: the 200-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington. Eager to discover why the president is hiding a national treasure, the two are entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder that reveals the best-kept secret of the presidency.
Brad Meltzer is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Book of Fate as well as the bestsellers The Book of Lies and Dead Even, and the nonfiction book, Heroes for My Son. Meltzer is the Eisner Award-winning writer of the comic, Justice League, and created a six-issue story arc for DC Comics’ Green Arrow.
Back to Top
|
