Georgia Center for the Book

			Georgia Center for the Book Author Appearances \| Georgia Literary Festival Georgia Top 25 Reading List \| Lindberg Award Letters About Literature \| River of Words Georgia Literary Resources Past Projects

Introduction

Bill Starr (left), director of the Georgia Center for the Book,
and his assistant, Joe Davich, have more than 40 years
experience working with authors, publishers, editors,
libraries and bookstores.

The Georgia Center for the Book is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Center, which celebrates its 10^th anniversary in 2008, has a mission of supporting libraries, literacy and literature, particularly Georgia's rich literary heritage. There are Centers in each of the 50 states; the Georgia center was chartered in early 1998 with the DeKalb County Public Library serving as the host site.

William W. Starr, a native of Atlanta, has been executive director of the Georgia Center for the Book since 2003, assisted by an advisory council of distinguished authors, librarians, publishers, scholars and journalists from around the state of Georgia. The Center partners with many organizations including the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the University of Georgia, Georgia Public Library Service, Agnes Scott College, Emory University, Georgia Humanities Council, the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College, The Little White House in Warm Springs, the DeKalb History Center and bookstores throughout metro Atlanta.

The Georgia Center now is the largest non-commercial literary presenting organization in the South and one of the largest in the nation. Its free public programs reached nearly 90,000 people throughout Georgia in 2006 and drew more than 160 authors to the state. The Center co-founded and is a major sponsor of the annual AJC Decatur Book Festival held over the Labor Day weekend.

News:

The Georgia Center for the Book is one of only five Centers around the country to receive the prestigious Boorstin Award in 2007 from the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The award was given in recognition of the Georgia Center's literary programming, its sponsorship of the Decatur Book Festival and its statewide "All Georgia Reads" project.

A new partnership between the Georgia Center for the Book and the Georgia Humanities Council is helping to better connect writers and readers. The Humanities Council approved funding of $30,000 in 2006 to help the Center bring nationally known authors to large and small libraries in Georgia 2007 and 2008.

The second annual AJC Decatur Book Festival drew an estimated crowd of 60,000 people over the Labor Day 2007 weekend. That's an attendance increase of approximately 10,000 over the previous year's inaugural event. The festival hosted some 230 authors from all over the world at locations around the city of Decatur. Details about the festival may be found at www.decaturbookfestival.com.

The 2005 Georgia Top 25 Reading List | Lindberg Award was announced May 10, 2005. Read the press release. The next list will appear in 2008. Author Anthony Grooms' book Trouble No More was chosen as the book "All Georgians Read" for 2006, and Grooms toured libraries around the state under the sponsorship of the Center for the Book and Georgia Humanities Council in March-April 2006.

The Center's current activities include:

Sponsoring nearly 100 programs each year bringing authors from around the nation and the state for free year-round public appearances.
Sponsoring the Georgia Literary Festival at a different city each year. The 2008 festival will be held in the Southwest Georgia city of Bainbridge on the weekend of October 25.
Sponsoring state student literary competitions in two national programs, Letters About Literature and River of Words
Developing programs to take nationally known authors to libraries around Georgia with a "We the People" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Georgia Humanities Council. The first "We the People" program was successfully held at Young Harris on January 29, 2007.
Co-sponsoring major state literary awards including the Townsend Prize, the Lindbergh Award and the Lillian Smith Award.

For more information on these projects, or on the Georgia Center for the Book, contact at 404-370-8450 ext 2225 or ext. 2285, or via E-mail.

© 2004, Georgia Center for the Book
c/o DeKalb County Public Library
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur, Georgia 30030
Last updated: October 30, 2007