Decatur Book Festival

Every Labor Day weekend, the city of Decatur, Georgia, hosts the Decatur Book Festival. Authors of all types of books converge on Decatur to discuss their latest books. MH is a librarian and this is Heaven on Earth for her. The first three sessions we attended were by Southern authors that we like. The characters they create or discuss can be recgnized by any native of the South.

Roy Blount, Jr. (below) is a favorite. He has become somewhat more famous lately because he appears frequently on the Saturday morning radio show from NPR, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". He is a native of Decatur but now lives in Massachusetts.


We have been hearing Bailey White of Thomasville, Georgia, as a guest on NPR's "All Things Considered" for years. We were glad to finally see her. (Sorry about the picture quality - it was hard to hold the camera still.)


Rick Bragg, a native of Alabama, has become well known writing about his parents. His book about his mother, "All Over but the Shoutin'", should be read by everyone who has a mother.


We don't have a picture but another author we enjoyed was John Dean. If you are near our age, you probably remember Dean as the star witness in the Watergate hearings before Congress. He was a legal counsel in the Nixon White House but these days, he writes books very harsh about Republicans in general and the Bush Administration specifically.

One author we did not get to see but MH would like to have was John Bemelmans Marciano, the grandson of the creator of the Madeline series of books for children. No books had been written in the series for many years until he started writing them.

A good time was had by all!