In addition, every single flavor of ice cream was renamed using the Festival authors’ book titles as inspiration, adding even more visibility to this fabulous, FREE literary event held in downtown Savannah during President’s Day weekend.

Stephanie Duttenhaver, board president of the Savannah Book Festival, is thrilled and honored by Leopold’s generosity: “Thanks to the wonderful folks at Leopold’s, even more people learned about our great Festival and also helped support it by buying a scoop of ‘SBF 30.’  What a fun, delicious way to help us keep this Festival FREE and open to the public!”

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, taking place before and during 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.

For more information, please contact the executive director for the Savannah Book Festival, Ms. Robin Gold, at (912) 358-0575; robin@savannahbookfestival.org; or 3025 Bull St., Suite 249, Savannah, GA 31405.

Leopold’s VeriBest™ ice cream is absolutely one-of-a-kind.  All flavors are made on the premises, one batch at a time, using top-secret family recipes handed down from the original Leopold brothers and using only the best all-natural ingredients, hand-picked for quality.  For more information about Leopold’s Ice Cream, please contact general manager Jennifer Klahr at jennifer@leopoldsicecream.com, 912-234-4442, or visit their website at http://www.leopoldsicecream.com/.

(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.

(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.

(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.

Here are the significant events taking place that weekend:

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011

5:30 pm—Keynote Address by Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice and Left Neglected, Trinity United Methodist Church

7 pm—Savannah Book Festival Gala for authors and major contributors to the Festival, Jepson Center for the Arts. For more information on how to contribute to the Festival or become a sponsor, go to http://www.savannahbookfestival.org/sponsor/ .

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2011

10 am – 5:30 pm—Savannah Book Festival, with presentations by the following authors:

Trinity United Methodist Church

10 am—Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn

11 am—Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife

12 noon—Lee Smith, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

1:30 pm—Lisa Genova, Still Alice

2:30 pm—Geoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around

3:30 pm—Tobias Wolff, Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

4:30 pm—Chuck Leavell, Smart, Strong and Sustainable: Building a Better America

Jepson Center for the Arts—Neises Auditorium

10 am—Lauretta Hannon, The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life

11 am—Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-Millennial South

12 noon—Scott Patterson, The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

1:30 pm—Martha Nesbitt, Savannah Celebrations: Simple Southern Party Menus

2:30 pm—Paula Wallace, Perfect Porches: Designing Welcoming Spaces for Outdoor Living

3:30 pm—Marc Smirnoff, Oxford American Book of Great American Music Writing

4:30 pm—Roy Blount, Hail, Hail Euphoria! Scenes from “Duck Soup” with commentary

Telfair Museum Rotunda

10 am—Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War

11 am—Chad Faries, And Then We Moved, A Memoir: 24 Houses in 10 Years

12 noon—George Dawes Green, A Dissertation on Flannery O’Connor and Savannah

1:30 pm—Harlow Unger, Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation

2:30 pm—Thomas Chatterton Williams, Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture

3:30 pm Vaughnette Goode Walker and Barry Sheehy, Savannah, Immortal City: Volume I, Civil War Savannah series

Telfair Sculpture Gallery

10 am—Beverly Donofrio, Looking for Mary—or the Blessed Mother and Me

11 am—Jonathan Rabb, Second Son

12 noon—Randi Davenport, The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes: A Mother’s Story

1:30 pm—Michael Malone, The Four Corners of the Sky

2:30 pm—Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

3:30 pm—Lenore Hart, The Raven’s Bride

Telfair Boardroom

10 am—Tina Brown, Crooked Row Straight: The Awakening of AIDS Activist Linda Jordan

11 am—Cavanaugh Lee, Save as Draft

12 noon—Cathy Smith Bowers, Like Shining from Shook Foil

1:30 pm—Waqas Khwaja, Modern Poetry of Pakistan

2:30 pm—Gregory Djanikian, So I Will Till the Ground

3:30 pm—David Bottoms, Waltzing through the Endtime

Free Speech Tent

10 am—Savannah State University writers

11 am—Armstrong Atlantic State University writers

12 noon—Savannah College of Art & Design writers

1:30 pm—Storytelling

2:30 pm—Tina McElroy Ansa & Tarshia Stanley

3:30 pm—Adam Davies on adapting his novel GoodBye Lemon into a screenplay

SATURDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 19, 2011

7:00 pm—Saturday Evening with Sandra and Ryan Brown, SCAD River Club

This mother-and-son duo will take the stage to talk about their lives in letters and field questions from the audience. This event is open and free to the public.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2011

11 am—Sunday Brunch Talk with Vince Dooley, Jepson Center for the Arts Atrium

The former football coach at the University of Georgia will talk about his book, Vince Dooley’s Garden: The Horticultural Journey of a Football Coach, in this highly-anticipated fundraiser for the Savannah Book Festival.  Mr. Dooley’s  illustrator, renowned artist Steve Penley, will also be on hand to discuss his beautiful illustrations.  To purchase a table for $750, please email robin@savannahbookfestival.org.

Please note that this schedule is subject to change.  For the most recent additions and changes to our Festival schedule, please visit our website at http://www.savannahbookfestival.org/2011-festival/schedule/ .

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

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.

Dr. Russell has been an enthusiastic patron of the Savannah Book Festival since its beginning and was an author speaker in 2008.  “I tend to enjoy the History and Biography speakers myself,” he says, “but the range of authors is overwhelming, including international topics, lifestyles, cuisine, southern subjects, humor, politics, poetry and so much else.  What a diverse feast is available to all Savannah, covering every personal taste and interest.”  All proceeds from the sale of Dr. Russell’s painting will benefit the Savannah Book Festival.

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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.

• 2 poets laureate (Georgia and North Carolina)
• 3 winners of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts
• 3 winners of awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2 winners of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation
• 2 winners of PEN/O. Henry Short Story Award
• 2 winners of the Thomas Wolfe Award
• 1 winner of an award from the Writer’s Guild
• 1 winner of the Book of the Month Club First Fiction Award
• 1 inclusion on 2010 The New York Times Notable Books of the Year list
• 1 winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History
• 1 winner of the Edgar Award
• 1 winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award
• 1 winner of an Emmy
• 1 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
• 1 winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
• 1 winner of the International Dashiell Hammett Prize
• 1 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award
• 1 New York Public Library Literary Lion
• 1 Boston Public Library Literary Light
• and many others

The following renowned authors will present their work and their lives in letters at the FREE Savannah Book Festival, Saturday, February 19, 2011:

• Roy Blount, Jr., Thomas Wolfe Award, New York Public Library Literary Lion, Boston Public Library Literary Light
• David Bottoms, poet laureate of Georgia; Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; Frederick Bock and Levinson Prizes from Poetry magazine; Ingram Merrill Award; Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation
• Cathy Smith Bowers, poet laureate of North Carolina
• Greg Djanikian, fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
• Robert Goolrick, Book of the Month Club First Fiction Award
• Jacqueline Jones, Bancroft Prize in American History; Bell Award for the Best Book on Georgia History 2008; Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
• Karl Marlantes, 2010 New York Times Notable Books of the Year
• Michael Malone, Edgar Award; PEN/O. Henry Award; Writer’s Guild Award; Emmy
• Jonathan Rabb, International Dashiell Hammett Prize
• Lee Smith, 1999 Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Thomas Wolfe Award; and Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award
• Geoffrey Wolff, Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts
• Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner and PEN/O. Henry Short Story Awards

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.

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.

In 1978, when the thought of an art school in the Deep South was viewed as completely out of reach, Paula Wallace defied expectations and co-founded SCAD, serving as academic dean and provost until she was named president in 2000.  SCAD has grown into one of the premier art and design schools in the country, with more than 9,500 students on four campuses, including the main campus in Savannah and satellites in Atlanta, GA; Lacoste, France; and Hong Kong.  SCAD is committed to preparing students in both the creative and business sides of the marketplace.

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 Katherine Oxnard Ellis at the Savannah Book Festival at (912) 358-0575; info@savannahbookfestival.org; or 3025 Bull St., Suite 249, Savannah, GA 31405.

Secretary—Laura Simpson, the director of special Events, Savannah Convention and Visitors Bureau.  Aiding in the production of several events a year, this Savannah native works at turning Savannah’s unique attributes into great festivals and events.

Treasurer—Scott Richards, owner and CEO of One-Stop Remodeling, has served on many boards and currently serves on Coastal Empire Habitat for Humanity and Isle of Hope Methodist Church. Richards is a successful small business owner who understands budgeting and fiscal responsibility.

New board members include:

Vaughnette Goode-Walker, the director of cultural diversity and access for the Telfair Museums, also serves on the boards of the Historic Savannah Foundation, the Friends of Massie Heritage Center, the Early College Board and is chair of the Chatham County Historic Preservation Commission. A former radio broadcaster and creator of the Footprints of Savannah Tour: A Complete Story of Slavery in Savannah, Ms. Goode-Walker is the author of the poetry collection, Going Home and co-author of the forthcoming book, Savannah, Immortal City, a pictorial and textual history of the important antebellum and Civil War sites in the city of Savannah, Georgia, and surrounding Chatham County.

Ann Higbee comes to this board after a more than 35-year marketing communications career, which focused on crisis communications, public affairs and public relations.  Ms. Higbee is now retired as managing partner of PR/PA with Eric Mower and Associates, one of the country’s leading independent marketing firms with offices in Atlanta, Charlotte and throughout upstate New York.

Scott Lauretti is senior managing director and founding partner of Guggenheim Partners, a New York-based financial services firm. He also serves as editor and publisher of The Skinniemagazine.  Mr. Lauretti has served on many community boards, including MedBank where he is the past chairman of the board; the Savannah Country Day School Board of Trustees, where he currently serves on the school’s investment committee; and the St. Joseph’s and Candler Hospitals Foundation Boards, where he is a member of the finance committee. Mr. Lauretti resides in Savannah with his wife and two daughters.

Liz Longshore has been executive director of MedBank since 2004.  Prior to joining MedBank, she worked with the American Red Cross and responded to a number of national disasters around the county including 9/11.  Longshore is a public relations graduate from Georgia Southern University and brings more than tewelve years of non-profit experience to MedBank. Last year, through this model, MedBank provided more than $6.7 million in free medications to the needy in her community.

Katherine Oxnard Ellis has been involved with the Savannah Book Festival since its first year in 2008, when she was a featured author.  A veteran freelance writer and editor, she has taught creative writing at the college level in four states.  She has also published articles and short stories in magazines and journals across the US, and she writes a regular column about politics and social issues for the Savannah Morning News.  Her short story collection, Your Better Half, was a finalist for the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction.

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.

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.Because the retreat takes place the same week as the Savannah Book Festival, participants who stay for the Festival will receive an opportunity to read excerpts of their work to festival audiences. Space is limited to five participants in each genre (fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry), so applicants are encouraged to sign up early: www.ossabawwritersretreat.org

Set aside by the State of Georgia as a preserve for natural, scientific and cultural studies, Ossabaw Island’s unspoiled beauty has attracted writers, artists and musicians for short periods of reflection, research and creativity since 1961. The Ossabaw Island Project grew out of founders Eleanor “Sandy” and Clifford West’s desire to share the island without destroying it. Past participants include writers Ralph Ellison, Annie Dillard, Olive Ann Burns, Margaret Atwood, Rosemary Daniell and Alice Walker; poets Edwin Honig and David Hamilton; composers Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber; ecologist Eugene Odum; and art historian H. W. Janson.

Fifteen emerging writers will continue this great tradition at the 2011 Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat: four days of creative reflection in one of the most beautiful and pristine places in America: Ossabaw Island, Georgia . . . twenty minutes by boat from Savannah, yet worlds apart.

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 about the 2011 Ossabaw Island Writer’s Retreat, visit ossabawwritersretreat.org or contact Tony Morris at write@ossabawwritersretreat.org .