booksAlive!

Now in its 16th year, booksALIVE! mixes creativity, learning, fun, and fellowship into several days’ inspiration for those who love to read. Saturday has free workshops, presentations, book signings, and the opportunity to mix with author/speakers for a full day for booklovers.

Workshops and presentations will be held at three different times: Session 1: 10:00-10:45 a.m., Session 2: 11:00-11:45 a.m. and Session 3: 2:15-3:15 p.m.

Shop, get books signed and visit until 4 p.m. Each author will speak twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. There is no charge for the author presentations.

Keynote speaker, Coach Bill Curry, a two-time Super Bowl Champion and former NCAA coach, will speak at the luncheon from 12:30 – 2:00 pm at the Holley Conference Center. There is a charge of $30 for the luncheon and talk. Tickets may be purchased at the Bay County Public Library at 898 West 11th Street in Panama City or at the Panama City Beach Public Library at 12500 Hutchinson Boulevard, Panama City Beach. Important – luncheon tickets should be purchased ahead of time.

There will be several other events on the days before and after the event . More information can be found on the website: http://www.booksalive.net/

Festival of Reading is presented by the Bay County Public Library Foundation.

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Keynote Speaker Bill Curry

Keynote speaker, Bill Curry, has an impressive number of accomplishments. In 1977 with George Plimpton, Bill wrote his first book: “One More July – A Football Dialogue . In 2008, Bill’s next book, “Ten Men You Meet in the Huddle” was released by ESPN books and was immediately praised by author Pat Conroy as “the best book ever about the NFL.”

As a young person, Bill was subjected to bullying. He states “I grew up in very modest circumstances. I was always the last one chosen. I was too short, I was too fat, was laughed at by the other children. I was told by people I wasn’t good enough, that I would never make it at anything I tried. In spite of these circumstances, however, I made an internal commitment to become a person who succeeded through persistence. I had very little ability but a lot of persistence. Just keep trying to find a way to succeed and you can do it.”

Bill’s commitment to persistence paid off. His football accomplishments were outstanding. He was a two-time Super Bowl Champion and played in two NFL Pro Bowls. He was named National Coach of the Year at Alabama. In 2008 Bill became the first head coach at Georgia State. His other honors include the 2007 Amos Alonzo Stagg Award for his lifetime work advancing the interests of football, the 2008 Gerald R. Ford Legends Center Award, and the 2012 Intellectual Property Legends Award. Bill served as President of the National Football League Players Association, as Executive Director of the leadership initiative at The Baylor School in Tennessee, and as an analyst and on-air personality for ESPN. When Bill talks of leadership and perseverance, his personal message resonates.

“There are two pains in life – the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. The first is temporary. The other lasts forever . You alone decide which to endure.”—Bill Curry

For more information on Bill, visit his website at billcurry.net.

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Featured Authors

[tabs type=”vertical”][tabs_head][tab_title]Kwame Alexander[/tab_title][tab_title]Susan M. Boyer[/tab_title][tab_title]Olivia deBelle Byrd[/tab_title][tab_title]Carolyn Newton Curry[/tab_title][tab_title]Chervis Isom[/tab_title][tab_title]Carolyn Maull McKinstry[/tab_title][tab_title]Patricia Moore-Pastides[/tab_title][tab_title]Michael Morris[/tab_title][tab_title]Marjory Wentworth[/tab_title][/tabs_head][tab]

Kwame Alexander is a poet and author of 18 books, including Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band (The 2014 Michigan Reads One Book Selection), He Said, She Said (a Junior Library Guild Selection), and The Crossover, a middle grade novel the New York Times called “a beautifully measured novel.”

He is the founder of Book-in-a-Day, a student-run publishing program that has created more than 3000 student authors; and LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy project that builds libraries, trains teachers, and empowers children through literature.

He visits schools and libraries, has owned several publishing companies, written for stage and television (TLC’s “Hip Hop Harry”), recorded a CD, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a weekly radio show, worked for the U .S . Government, and taught in a high school. In 2015, Kwame will serve as Bank Street College of Education’s first writer-in-residence. [/tab][tab]Susan M . Boyer is the bestselling author of the AwardWinning Liz Talbot series . Her debut novel, Lowcountry Boil was the Winner of the 2012 Agatha Best First Novel Award, the Daphe du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery, and a 2012 RWA Golden Heart Finalist. Her second novel, Lowcountry Bombshell, was released in September 2013 .

Liz Talbot is a modern Southern Belle: she blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape. Liz’s next adventures will be in the upcoming Lowcountry Boneyard and Lowcountry Bordello. Susan plans for Liz Talbot to have many more cases to solve.

Susan has been making up stories her whole life. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina but tags along with her husband on business trips whenever she can because hotels are great places to write: fresh coffee all day and cookies at 4 p.m. Susan’s short fiction has appeared in Spinetingler Magazine, Relief Journal, and The Petigru Review.[/tab][tab]Olivia deBelle Byrd is a humorist and sought-after speaker who delights audiences with hilarious stories of her beloved South by turning ordinary happenings into entertainment.

Her first book of humorous essays, Miss Hildreth Wore Brown: Anecdotes of a Southern Belle, was the winner of the Florida Publishers Association Book Awards.

Her recent novel, Save My Place, was released in September 2014 .

Byrd is a third-generation Panama City resident, where she lives with her husband, Tommy Cooley.[/tab][tab] Carolyn Newton Curry is the author of Suffer and Grow Strong: The Life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1834-1907. Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas was an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834 to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia. At the age of fourteen she began and kept a diary for forty-one years. These diaries of her life before, during, and after the Civil War filled thirteen hand-written volumes.

Carolyn Newton Curry holds a BA in English from Agnes Scott College and MA and PhD degrees in History from Georgia State University. She has taught at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta and The University of Kentucky. Curry is the founder and chair of Women Alone Together, a nonprofit foundation created to meet the needs of women who are alone in our culture. The well-being of woman past and present has been her lifelong passion. Curry resides in Atlanta, Georgia.[/tab][tab]Chervis Isom is the author of The Newspaper Boy, a remarkable collection of memories and personal reflections of the deep emotional conflicts a young newspaper delivery boy encountered while growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in a time of racial strife and discord in the 1950s and early 1960s. A quiet and shy boy, the young Isom was a reader, and it would be the written word he would turn to as he tried to make sense of his world.

He is a graduate of Cumberland School of Law of Samford University (J.D., 1967).

He is now a shareholder in the Birmingham, Alabama office of Baker Donelson Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, having practiced law in Birmingham for forty-six years with the same firm. The former Chair of the Real Estate Practice Group in Birmingham, he has worked extensively throughout the South with developers and real estate professionals from all walks of life. As a working writer, Chervis has spent countless hours over the past five years visiting and recalling the Norwood community of his childhood and youth on the north side of Birmingham, and now serves on the Board of Directors of the Norwood Resource Center.

During the course of writing his recollections, he has happily rekindled old friendships, has moved with his wife, Martha, from the suburbs to downtown Birmingham, and has become active in community affairs.[/tab][tab]Carolyn Maull McKinstry is a survivor of the Civil Rights struggle and an eyewitness to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. As a teenager, she marched with Dr . Martin Luther King Jr . and bravely faced Bull Connor’s German shepherds and stinging fire hoses during the battle for equal rights in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.

While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement, is a poignant and gripping eyewitness account of life in the Jim Crow South: from the bombings, riots, and assassinations to the historic marches and triumphs that characterized the Civil Rights movement.

A uniquely moving exploration of how racial relations have evolved over the past five decades, While the World Watched is an incredible testament to how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

Carolyn is still an active member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, serves as president of the Sixteenth Street Foundation, and works full time spreading her message of racial reconciliation. [/tab][tab]With her second cookbook Patricia Moore-Pastides heads to the garden to show us how to make a do-it-yourself healthful lifestyle possible for the whole family. MoorePastides, an accomplished cook and public-health professional, presents all new recipes focused on bringing the bounty of the garden to the table in easy and accessible ways. Targeting young adults but valuable for all novices, Greek Revival from the Garden focuses on the time-tested Mediterranean diet— recommended for great taste, good health, and long-life — and on learning simple, delicious cooking methods that foster a happy and healthy relationship with good food.

Patricia Moore-Pastides is the First Lady of the University of South Carolina, where she teaches healthy Mediterranean cooking classes for USC students . In addition Moore-Pastides, who earned a master’s in public health (MPH) from Yale University, teaches adults and children through Columbia’s Cooking!, a community program offered by the University’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program. As part of being an active participant in Healthy Carolina’s farmers’ market, she cultivates an organic vegetable garden at the President’s House. Moore-Pastides also works to support sustainability initiatives on campus and lectures on wellness, specifically the health benefits of the traditional Mediterranean diet and lifestyle.[/tab][tab] Michael Morris is author of the acclaimed novels A Place Called Wiregrass, a Christy Award winner, and Slow Way Home, named one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Birmingham News.

His novella based on the Grammy-nominated song “Live Like You Were Dying” became a finalist for the esteemed Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

His latest novel, Man in the Blue Moon, was named Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly.

A fifth-generation Florida native, he now lives with his wife in Alabama.[/tab][tab]Marjory Wentworth’s poems have appeared in numerous books, magazines, and anthologies. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize five times. She is the Poet Laureate of South Carolina .

New and Selected Poems was released in March with the University of South Carolina Press.

Ms. Wentworth serves on the Board of Directors and is the current President of the Lowcountry Initiative for the Literary Arts (LILA); she is on the board of directors of the Poetry Society of SC .

Her work is included in the South Carolina Poetry Archives at Furman University. She teaches poetry in The Charleston County School’s Engaging Creative Minds Program and she is on the faculty at The Art Institute of Charleston .

Educated at Mt . Holyoke College, Marjory Wentworth received her M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from New York University.[/tab][/tabs] [divider]

Mary Alice Monroe – Featured Author

Nature is the lifeblood of Mary Alice Monroe novels. Her characters, themes and storylines are inspired by the natural landscape and all that it embodies. Monroe’s trademark writing style resonates with her legions of fans, who find themselves drawn to the animal species featured in her novels-loggerhead sea turtles, wild East Coast shrimp, birds of prey and now dolphins.

In her latest literary work, The Lowcountry Summer Trilogy, Monroe expertly raises awareness about the threats facing Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, while engaging readers with a story that explores contemporary human and moral issues. The final book of the trilogy, The Summer’s End, will be nationally released May 19, 2015.

Described as “the canary in the coal mine,” the New York Times bestselling author’s conservation convictions add richness and meaning to her memorable novels. The impetus for writing this trilogy now is the hard fact that approximately half of the wild dolphins in South Carolina and Florida are unhealthy.

For every book, Monroe always does hands-on research first, allowing the animals and environment to help her organically craft her novels. For The Lowcountry Summer Trilogy, she worked with dolphin researchers from Florida Atlantic University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Charleston, South Carolina; professionals from the Mote Marine Laboratory Dolphin and Whale Hospital in Sarasota; and staff at the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) in Grassy Key.

Monroe’s most enlightening experience was at the Dolphin Research Center, where she worked with dolphins and staff in the special needs programs for children and wounded war veterans. From those experiences Monroe gleaned the major themes and characters for The Lowcountry Summer Trilogy, which is set in coastal South Carolina and Florida. Each book in the series focuses on one of three estranged half-sisters spending a final summer at their grandmother’s seaside home before it’s sold. A wild dolphin they meet serves as the trilogy’s keystone and all of their lives are changed .

Monroe’s cast of characters includes a ten-year-old boy, Nate, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and the impact the dolphin has on his life. Monroe was moved to include this element in her series based on the real-life experiences she had working with the children at the Dolphin Research Center.

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