2011 Festival

The Savannah Book Festival is proud to announce a generous financial donation of $125 from Leopold’s Ice Cream, which resulted from sales of a special Festival-inspired ice cream flavor, “SBF 30.”  A play on words alluding to the sun protection factor (SPF) in sunscreen and to Savannah’s famous sunny days, “SBF 30” was a new twist on caramel crunch, a creamy caramel with a home-made praline crunch.  Leopold’s sold more than two barrels of the one-time-only flavor “SBF 30” over several days before and during the Savannah Book Festival, February 15-20, 2011. read more…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(SAVANNAH, GA) Winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and an Academy Award in Fiction from American Academy of Arts and Letters, fiction writer Lee Smith will appear at the Fourth Annual Savannah Book Festival, in a presentation that will be free and open to the public on Saturday, February 19, 2011.  Smith will present her latest book of short stories, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger, and talk about her life in letters, after which she will field questions from the audience.

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger, Smith’s newest in thirteen years, collects fourteen stories: seven brand-new ones along with seven favorites from her three earlier collections. Famous for unmistakable voices and a craft so strong and sure it seems effortless, Lee Smith’s stories strike dead center at the turning points of her characters’ lives. Here those characters range from an eight-year-old boy obsessed with vocabulary words and a young bride who has married “way up” to Mrs. Darcy herself, an older woman making it through widowhood her own way.

Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not ten miles from the Kentucky border. The sense of place infusing her novels reveals her insight into and empathy for the people and culture of Appalachia. Since 1968, she has published eleven novels as well as three collections of short stories.

The Savannah Book Festival’s mission is to promote reading, writing and civil conversation. It is now a significant event in both the literary and southeastern USA calendars, with a new date this year: February 18-20, 2011 – President’s Day weekend. The Savannah Book Festival Inc. is an independent non-profit corporation led by a volunteer board of directors. It is committed to remaining free and open to the public and to celebrating the written word and its role in improving the human experience.

Visit savannahbookfestival.org to plan your trip. You’ll find special deals with local hotels and tourist venues, and the website content is frequently updated.

For more information, please contact the Savannah Book Festival at (912) 358-0575; info@savannahbookfestival.org; or 3025 Bull St., Suite 249, Savannah, GA 31405, http://www.savannahbookfestival.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(SAVANNAH, GA) Author, conservationist and Georgia Music Hall of Fame member Chuck Leavell and his wife, master gardener Rose Lane Leavell, will appear at the Fourth Annual Savannah Book Festival, in a presentation that will be free and open to the public on Saturday, February 19, 2011. The Leavells will present their rock autobiography, Between Rock and a Home Place, which explores Chuck’s life on the road with the Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones and many others, as well as reflections on their Georgia tree farm and sustainable forestry practices. Afterwards, they will field questions from the audience.

In Between Rock and a Home Place, Chuck looks back on four decades in rock and roll, beginning in the late 1960s in Alabama. He first achieved fame as a member of the Allman Brothers Band during the peak of their career, and for over 25 years—spanning their last ten albums—Leavell has recorded and performed as keyboardist and vocalist with The Rolling Stones. Rose Lane grew up on Charlane Plantation and has created fantastic gardens there, and she also directed the restoration of the main house and its guest homes. The Leavells manage about 2,500 acres of tree farm in Georgia, bequeathed to Rose Lane by her grandmother, and in 1999 they were awarded the National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year.

The Savannah Book Festival’s mission is to promote reading, writing and civil conversation. It is now a significant event in both the literary and southeastern USA calendars, with a new date this year: February 18-20, 2011 – President’s Day weekend. The Savannah Book Festival Inc. is an independent non-profit corporation led by a volunteer board of directors. It is committed to remaining free and open to the public and to celebrating the written word and its role in improving the human experience.

Visit savannahbookfestival.org to plan your trip. You’ll find special deals with local hotels and tourist venues, and the website content is frequently updated.

For more information, please contact the Savannah Book Festival at (912) 358-0575; info@savannahbookfestival.org; or 3025 Bull St., Suite 249, Savannah, GA 31405, http://www.savannahbookfestival.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(SAVANNAH, GA) – The Savannah Book Festival is proud to announce that Karl Marlantes, author of the novel Matterhorn—a New York Times bestseller and recent winner of the prestigious Center for Fiction’s 2010 Flaherty-Dunham First Novel Prize—will appear in a FREE presentation at the Savannah Book Festival on February 19, 2011.  The story follows Bravo Company, a U.S. Marine unit, as it takes and re-takes a hilltop firebase near the DMZ and Laotian border in 1969 Vietnam.

Marlantes, 65, a highly decorated Marine Corps officer, Vietnam veteran and Rhodes Scholar, wrote and revised Matterhorn based on his experiences during the war over a 33-year period. During the years of rejection by publishers, he was told to rewrite the novel for the first Gulf War, then Afghanistan.  But the Washington State resident remained unwavering in his devotion to tell the story of political incompetence, wartime drudgery and uncommon valor.

Matterhorn was recently shortlisted as a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunham First Novel Prize and was selected by Barnes & Noble as one of its Discover Great New Writers picks.  The New York Times called Matterhorn “a final exorcism for one of the most painful passages in American history.”

The Savannah Book Festival’s mission is to promote reading, writing and civil conversation. It is now a significant event in both the literary and southeastern USA calendars, with a new date this year: February 18-20, 2011 – President’s Day weekend. The Savannah Book Festival Inc. is an independent non-profit corporation led by a volunteer board of directors. It is committed to remaining free and open to the public and to celebrating the written word and its role in improving the human experience.

Visit savannahbookfestival.org to plan your trip. You’ll find special deals with local hotels and tourist venues, and the website content is frequently updated.

For more information, contact the Savannah Book Festival at (912) 358-0575; info@savannahbookfestival.org; or 3025 Bull St., Suite 249, Savannah, GA 31405, http://www.savannahbookfestival.org.

The 4th annual Savannah Book Festival proudly announces the schedule for the Festival, which will take place during President’s Day Weekend, February 18-20, 2011, in and around Telfair Square on beautiful historic downtown Savannah, Georgia. read more…

Dr. Preston Russell, a retired physician, painter, historian and writer, has painted an extraordinary new book-related piece of artwork entitled “The Parlor Library,” to be auctioned off at a special VIP reception for major donors to the Savannah Book Festival on January 18, 2011at the Jepson Center for the Arts.

Since Dr. Russell retired from medicine after 30 years at Memorial Hospital, his paintings have appeared in regional art shows and in homes throughout America and Europe, as well as in museums that include the Telfair and Morris Museum in Augusta.  His book, The Low Country: From Savannah to Charleston, contains 85 of his paintings which capture the mystique of the region.  Preston Russell and his wife, Barbara Hines, co-authored Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733, and his most recent book is Lights of Madness:  In Search of Joan of Arc. read more…

The Savannah Book Festival is thrilled to announce that its FREE lineup of critically acclaimed 2011 Festival authors includes the following award winners: read more…

Paula Wallace, president and co-founder of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), as well as an artist, interior designer and author, will speak on Saturday, February 19, 2:30 pm at the Jepson – Neises Auditorium in a free and open-to-the-public presentation.

Her newly published book, Perfect Porches, celebrates outdoor living and features the personal and unique porches of forty homes, including Ms. Wallace’s 1890 row house in downtown Savannah.  In more than 250 stunning photographs of the homes, Perfect Porches illustrates how varied these iconic American spaces can be.  Home owners share colorful stories about using their porches as communal stages for magical and sometimes mythological events, telling of ghosts encountered, arias sung and families reunited. read more…

The Savannah Book Festival proudly announces its newest board members and officers for the 2011 festival year.  Led by the new president of the board of directors, Stephanie Duttenhaver, this committed group of volunteers is thrilled to be organizing the fourth annual Savannah Book Festival, which will take place February 18-20, 2011.  Ms. Duttenhaver is the former vice president of member services for the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce and interim executive director of the Savannah Community Foundation. She has served on several boards and committees, including Memorial Health Foundation, Savannah Community Foundation, Coastal Georgia Soccer Association and the Police Chief’s Citizens Advisory Panel.  Other officers announced recently include: read more…

In a special literary workshop leading up to the Savannah Book Festival, 15 lucky writers will study with one of three critically-acclaimed authors at the Ossabaw Island Writer’s Retreat, February 14-17, 2011.  http://www.ossabawwritersretreat.org/

Co-sponsored by Armstrong Atlantic State University, Poetry Knows, Southern Poetry Review and the Savannah Book Festival, the Retreat will span four days and cost $1,450, which includes: three nights’ lodging, meals and ferried transportation to the island; writing workshops, craft seminars and one-on-one manuscript consultations with nationally recognized authors; and readings. The renowned faculty will be poet Cathy Smith-Bowers, memoirist Beverly Donofrio and novelist Lenore Hart; all three will also appear in FREE presentations at the Savannah Book Festival on Saturday, February 19, 2011. read more…