This post about the past weekend’s Southern Festival of Books goes back to the very first night, when BookPage reserved a table at the Authors in the Round dinner. We got to the cocktail party a little late but there was plenty of time to catch a glimpse of authors like Kathryn Stockett, Robert Hicks, Jill McCorkle, Michael Sims and even John Carter Cash, who was wearing a dapper seersucker suit.
Our dinner companion was Madison Smartt Bell, who we’re pretty sure was happy with his seat between two lovely ladies.
Nonfiction Editor Kate Pritchard, Madison Smartt Bell, and me
Conversation ranged from his early years in Nashville, to the Bell witch, to the merits of Goucher College, where he is a professor of English. And of course we talked about his forthcoming novel, Devil’s Dream, which brings one of the Civil War’s most complicated generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to life. Bell told us his college-aged daughter helped him finalize the book’s structure, which jumps backward and forward through time with each chapter. Watch for more details in a website interview in November.
If you could have dinner with an author, who would it be?
Another dispatch from the Southern Festival of Books…
While the anticipation grows for Stephen King’s Under the Dome, buzz is also building for the latest project from his son, who writes as Joe Hill. Hill’s debut, 
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