Join the Public Library Division for GLC 2020 Virtual Author Reception – fun social event to bring authors and librarians together. Four prominent authors are given 10 minutes to share and participate in a little game of 2 Truths & a Lie. In this game authors will present 2 true things and one lie about one of their works. Attendees will respond with their answers in the chat box. The first person to get all three correct will win a $25 gift card. Each author will have the opportunity to present, resulting in 4 rounds and 4 winners. After all 4 authors have had an opportunity to present we will have 20 minutes left for Q & A. Bonus Prizes also available!!!
Enjoy a non-alcoholic and alcoholic book themed cocktail for this fun time of cocktails with our authors and fellow librarians.
The authors’ lineup for this exciting event is in! Register for GLC 2020 to attend this and many other programs!
Carmen Agra Deedy is the author of twelve books for children, including The Library Dragon, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! and 14 Cows for America, a New York Times Best- seller. Rita and Ralph’s Rotten Day! (Scholastic Press) was released in 2020.
Her personal stories first appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered. Funny, insightful, and frequently irreverent, Deedy’s narratives are culled from her childhood as a Cuban refugee in Decatur, Georgia. She is host of the four-time Emmy-winning children’s program, Love That Book!
An award-winning author and storyteller, Deedy is also an accomplished lecturer, having been a guest speaker for both the TED and TEDx Conferences, the Library of Congress, Columbia University, the National Book Festival, and the Kennedy Center, among other distinguished venues. A life-long supporter of the institution, she opened the 2016 Art of the Book Lecture Series for the Smithsonian Libraries. Deedy was appointed a member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board in October 2019.
Her newest picture book, The Children’s Moon (Scholastic Press), illustrated by Jim LaMarche, is projected to be released in 2021.
Wanda Smalls Lloyd, journalist, author and public speaker, is author of COMING FULL CIRCLE: From Jim Crow to Journalism, published by NewSouth Books. The memoir shares Lloyd’s experiences growing up in the 1950s-1960s in the restrictive laws that separated races, yet she became one of the highest-ranking women and people of color working in daily newspaper journalism. In 2019 she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
Lloyd has worked as an editor at seven daily newspapers, including The Washington Post, USA Today, the Miami Herald and the Atlanta Journal. She retired from daily journalism in 2013 as executive editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. After her newsroom career of more than four decades, Lloyd was appointed as associate professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia, a position she held for three years before returning to retirement.
Lloyd was the founding executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Diversity Institute trained people of color seeking mid-career shifts into daily newspaper journalism careers.
Lloyd has been a four-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize. She is co-editor of THE EDGE OF CHANGE: Women in the 21st Century Press, published by University of Chicago Press in 2009. She served on the faculty of the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at Columbia University.
She earned a degree in English from Spelman College, and in 2016 Spelman awarded her the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
Joshilyn Jackson is New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist. Her newest book Never Have I Ever, is available now wherever books are sold. You can check out her previous eight novels and other work here. Joshilyn’s books have been translated into a dozen languages, have won SIBA’s Novel of the Year award, have three times been #1 Book Sense Pick, have twice won Georgia Author of the Year awards, have three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and have been a finalist for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.
A former actor, Jackson reads the audio versions of both her own novels and the books of other writers; her work in this field has been nominated for the Audie Award, was selected by AudioFile Magazine for their best of the year list, won three Earphones awards, made the 2012 Audible All-Star list for highest listener ranks/reviews, and garnered three Listen Up awards from Publisher’s Weekly.
She serves on the board of Reforming Arts, a nonprofit that runs education-in-prison and reentry programs. Reforming Arts fosters the development of critical and creative thinking skills, encouraging students to build livable lives both during and post-incarceration. Through this organization, Joshilyn has taught creative writing, composition, and literature inside Georgia’s maximum security facility for women.
Joshilyn learned to scuba-dive in order to write Never Have I Ever, and now she and her husband Scott are both avid divers. They live in Decatur, Georgia with their two kids, two entitled cats, and a modestly-sized dog.
Roger Johns is a former corporate lawyer, retired college professor, and the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books: Dark River Rising (2017) and River of Secrets (2018). He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year (Detective ▪ Mystery Category), a 2018 Killer Nashville Readers’ Choice Award nominee, and a finalist for the 2018 Silver Falchion Award for best police procedural. His articles and interviews on writing and the writing life have appeared in Career Author, Criminal Element, Killer Nashville Articles, and the Southern Literary Review. Roger belongs to the Atlanta Writers Club, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Along with four other crime fiction writers, he co-authors the MurderBooks blog at www.murder-books.com. Please visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com.
