The 14th annual Georgia Literary Festival, which celebrates writers and writing in a different part of the state each year, will be hosted by the College of Coastal Georgia, The Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Jekyll Island Authority. Representatives of area organizations including the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association, the Jekyll Island Club Hotel and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center have been planning the event since 2011.
The exciting lineup of more than 30 authors includes Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey, environmentalist and author Janisse Ray, popular author Mary Kay Andrews, bestselling thriller writer Steve Berry, nationally renown chefs Nathalie Dupree, Hugh Acheson and Damon Lee Fowler, a celebration of The Georgia Review, children’s authors and many others. The festival invitation list includes:
Natasha Trethewey (Keynote speaker) — Just named Poet Laureate of the United States, she is winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection “Native Guard.” A native of Mississippi who now lives in Atlanta and teaches at Emory University, she has written both fiction and nonfiction including “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.” She has a new book of poetry, “Thrall.” She is a winner of the Lillian Smith Award and is represented on the Center for the Book’s list of “25 Books All Georgians Should Read.”
