30th annual Southern Voices Festival inspires, entertains at Hoover library
Some people might think going to a library to hear book authors talk all day would be boring, but people in the audience at the 2023 Southern Voices Festival authors conference Saturday told the opposite story.
“I thought it was fabulous. It’s always fabulous,” said Kris Cross, a Homewood woman who was at the conference at the Hoover Public Library for the third time. “To hear writers, especially debut novelists, talk about their process and how they decided they’re going to write a book … I think a lot of us want to write a book. That’s everybody’s dream right? I think it’s just great to hear people’s story of how they finally did it. … It’s very inspirational.”
And the authors speaking Saturday weren’t just any authors. They included authors who have been on the New York Times bestseller list and authors who have won coveted awards.
This year’s lineup included Sarah Penner, Alka Joshi, Ashley Winstead, Vanessa Riley, Will Leitch, Robin Peguero and Ben Raines.
Raines was the only nonfiction writer in the bunch, but when he went past his allotted time just before lunch, audience members moaned when a library official said it was time to break, prompting her to give Raines more time to finish his presentation.
Kent McGriff, a Hoover resident who was in the audience, said he could have listened to Raines talk for another hour.
Raines, who lives in Fairhope, is an environmental journalist, filmmaker and charter boat captain who in 2018 discovered the wreckage of the Clotilda, the last ship that carried enslaved Africans to the United States, along the edge of the Mobile River. He wrote a book about it that was published last year and is lobbying to have the remnants dug out of the mud and put in a museum.
Rochelle Simms, a resident of Hoover’s Ross Bridge neighborhood, said she had read Raines’ book, and seeing his slide presentation with photos and hearing his explanation in person really pulled the story together beautifully for her.
Simms said she had read at least one book of each of this year’s Southern Voices authors prior to the conference and loved hearing how they began writing and get ideas for their books.
“This is the most amazing day in the city of Birmingham,” she said.
STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS
Cross, who is Simms’ daughter, said she thought it was especially interesting to hear from so many authors who had strong, independent female characters in their books.
With women making up almost two-thirds of book readers in the United States, “there’s definitely a place for writers who want to write stories about women,” Cross said.
Penner said she learned a lot about what people want to read with her first attempt at a book, which did not get published. That book was about two women who were pitted against each other, and at the end of the book, a man came in and pretty much solved all their problems and saved them, she said.
She got more than 130 rejection letters from book agents, some of whom helped her realize that kind of storyline wouldn’t fly with today’s book audience and that her female characters needed to be able to make their own decisions and do brave, hard things, she said.
So, when Penner sat back down to write a different story, she went as far away from her original premise as she could with her next book (and first published book), “The Lost Apothecary.”
That book is about an 18th century female apothecary in London who develops poisons for women who are seeking vengeance over men who wronged them.
And that book became a New York Times bestseller that has been translated into 40 languages and has been optioned to be turned into a drama series by Fox. “Clearly the premise matters,” Penner said.
Several other authors who spoke Saturday had strong female characters in their books.
Riley’s novels are known for showcasing the hidden histories of Black women and other women of color, emphasizing strong sisterhood relationships in multicultural communities.
Her characters, even in a historical romance novel, don’t have a goal of falling in love or getting married, even if that would have been a goal in the time period she’s writing about, she said.
“They’re trying to do something — something tangible, something measurable, something that has total independence of what the hero does,” Riley said. “We’re teaching our girls agency. They need to learn it in the literature that they’re reading so they can go out and do all kind of interesting, fascinating things in the future.”
Joshi, whose debut novel, “The Henna Artist,” became an immediate New York Times bestseller, based her book on the type of life her Indian mother could have had if she had not been forced to leave college and enter an arranged marriage.
PATHS TO WRITING
The authors who spoke Saturday talked about the varied paths they took to get into writing books.
Winstead always knew she wanted to be a writer. She started out with a desire to be a poet but in college switched and wanted to become a short story writer. She had good success as an undergraduate but was rejected from all 12 of the master of fine arts programs to which she applied and gave up writing for 10 years, she said.
“I was crushed,” she said. “I took that as a sign from the universe not only that I wasn’t a good writer but that this identity that I had wrapped myself up in — that Ashley Winstead was a reader and a writer — that that was false. … I did what you’re not supposed to do, and I took rejection so personally.”
She went to work in the music, TV and entertainment industry but later came back to her love and got a doctorate in contemporary American literature and started writing again. Her 2021 breakout thriller, “In My Dreams I Hold a Knife,” was an Amazon Editor’s Best Thriller, an Apple Books Best Book and was picked by Library Journal,, New York Times, CrimeReads, Parade and Goodreads as a best or most anticipated thriller of the year.
Others chose a variety of professions before writing a book. Penner worked in “riveting back-office” work in the finance industry for 13 years. Riley worked as an industrial and mechanical engineer, and Raines and Leitch are journalists.
Peguero spent seven years as a prosecutor in Miami and has worked as a press spokesman for a Congressman, a speechwriter for a U.S. senator, member of the U.S. House investigative legal team looking into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and currently is chief of staff for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Joshi ran her own advertising and public relations agency for 30 years before publishing her first novel at age 62. It took her nine years and 20 revisions before she finally got accepted by a division of HarperCollins.
As Penner said, “there is no one or right path to being an author.”
Several of the authors talked about the challenges of being an author during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that many speaking engagements and book festivals were canceled for a while. But the pandemic also ushered new types of opportunities. Joshi noted she has done 890 book club presentations by Zoom now that it has been established as an easier and less expensive alternative to in-person appearances.
Several writers talked about how some of their books have been optioned for TV or film, but most of them said whether their books actually get made into a TV series or movie is still speculative. But they still get paid as the entertainment companies consider the option.
People who came to Saturday’s authors conference bought nearly 400 books by the authors from the Little Professor Bookshop in Homewood, which set up a mini-store at the festival, store representative Kathleen Wylie said.
McGriff, who was vastly in the minority as a man in the audience Saturday, said some of the books talked about could be considered “chick lit” that he wouldn’t read, but it was still interesting to hear the authors talk about their work.
“I personally don’t do a lot of reading, but I always vow to read more often when I leave here,” he said. “Just getting to know people that have thought about things so deeply as they have always just makes for an enjoyable day.”
Cross, when asked if she ever wanted to write a book, said she hasn’t done it yet, “but maybe this year will be the year I go home and start making notes.”
Bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand was the keynote speaker for this year’s Southern Voices Festival Friday night. See the report about Hilderbrand’s talk here. The featured entertainer this year was Miko Marks on Thursday night, and the featured artist was Sara Garden Armstrong. This was the 30th anniversary of Southern Voices.
Editor's note: This article was updated at 9:26 a.m. on Feb. 28 to correct Robin Peguero's current job. He is chief of staff for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.