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Mystery writer Laura Lippman to headline 2020 Southern Voices Festival in Hoover

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Photo courtesy of Hoover Public Library

Renowned mystery writer Laura Lippman will be the headliner for the 2020 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in February, library officials announced this week.

Lippman is scheduled to give the keynote speech on Friday, Feb. 21, prior to the authors conference on Saturday, Feb. 22.

Authors speaking Saturday include Kimberly Belle, Emily Carpenter, Lauren Denton, Sally Kilpatrick, Sarah MacLean, Hampton Sides, George Singleton and Snowden Wright.

Tickets go on sale Jan. 7.

Lippman of Baltimore spent 20 years as a newspaper reporter before leaving the Baltimore Sun in 2001 to focus on her novelist career, according to her website. She had already published seven novels in seven years about a fictional reporter named Tess Monaghan who began a new career as a private investigator.

Now, Lippman has published more than 20 novels and multiple short stories, several of which have been anthologized in the Best American Mystery Stories.

She has won numerous awards, including the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards and has made the New York Times bestseller list. Her latest novel is called “Lady in the Lake.”

Photo by Jon Anderson

Something different for this year’s festival will be the presence of two romance novelists on the list of speakers — Kilpatrick and MacLean, said Carrie Steinmehl, chairwoman for the Southern Voices Festival.

“We’ve never had that genre before at Southern Voices, so it will be interesting to see how our audience reacts to that,” Steinmehl said.

Kilpatrick writes modern-day romance novels, while MacLean writes historical romance.

Belle and Carpenter are mystery/suspense writers. Steinmehl said their books are the type that you stay up to 3 a.m. to finish because you can’t put them down. They have communicated with one another before, and “I think they’ll pair really well together on stage,” Steinmehl said.

Carpenter originally is from the Birmingham area, but both she and Belle now live in the Atlanta area. Wright, originally from Mississippi, also lives in Atlanta.Denton is a native of Mobile but now lives in Homewood.

Singleton is a short story writer who was born in California but raised in South Carolina, and Sides is the only nonfiction writer in this year’s lineup.

The festival kicks off on Tuesday, Feb. 18, with a reception for Opelika oil painter Carlton Nell, who is an art professor at Auburn University.

Nell, who obtained his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Auburn University and master of fine arts degree degree from Georgia State University, does a lot of paintings that depict his immediate surroundings in Alabama, including landscapes, clouds, stars, trees and flowers. He has had his work exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, including the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York and Art Basel in Miami.

Artwork courtesy of Carlton Nell

He is expected to bring about 10 of his oil paintings for display in the Friends Gallery at the Hoover Public Library from Feb. 6 to March 31 and will be at the reception to meet the public on Feb. 18 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Rounding out the festival will be two one-act plays, each to be shown on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 19-20. One, called “Graceland,” tells the story of two ardent Elvis Presley fans who are determined to be the first to enter his Graceland mansion when it opens to the public. The second play, called “Asleep on the Wind,” is a prequel set 10 years earlier. The plays were written by Ellen Byron and will be directed by Henry Scott.

Here is more about each of the speakers at the Feb. 22 authors conference, per information from the Hoover Public Library and the authors’ websites:

Kimberly Belle

Photo courtesy of Brandon Wattso

Belle grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. After graduating from Agnes Scott College, she worked in marketing and nonprofit fundraising before becoming a writer.

She has authored five international bestselling suspense novels. Her third novel, “The Marriage Lie,” was a semifinalist in the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards for best mystery and thriller and has been translated in 10 languages. Deep South Magazine calls her latest novel, “Dear Wife,” both a call to action and a sobering portrait of domestic abuse and its consequences.

Belle met her Dutch husband in Atlanta and moved with him to the Netherlands for 12 years. They now live in Atlanta with their two children but travel back to the Netherlands frequently.

Emily Carpenter

Carpenter, who was born in Birmingham, graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor’s degree in communication and two minors in journalism and theater. She moved to New York with her husband and began work at CBS overseeing the production of soap operas such as “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns.”

She then moved to Atlanta and wrote a few screenplays, pitching them to Hollywood agents and production companies and was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab but had little success in that arena.

Carpenter joined the Atlanta Writers Club and made efforts in the romantic comedy genre before switching to Southern Gothic literature with “Burying the Honeysuckle Girls.” She has since written four more novels, the latest of which is “Until the Day I Die.”

Lauren Denton

Denton grew up as a voracious reader in Mobile and also graduated from Auburn University. She then took a job with Southern Progress Corp. in the Birmingham area and wrote in her spare time.

She wrote her first full manuscript in 2011 but ended up shelving. She published her first novel, “The Hideaway,” in 2017, and it is now a USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestseller.

Her second novel, “Hurricane Season,” was listed on BookPage’s 2018 list of Most Anticipated Fiction, and her third novel, “Glory Road,” was released in March 2019. Denton currently lives in Homewood with her husband and two young daughters and writes a monthly column for The Homewood Star about life, faith and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent.

Sally Kilpatrick

Kilpatrick was born and raised in a small town in west Tennessee but now lives with her husband and two children in Marietta, Georgia. However, she says her heart has never left Tennessee, and her books reflect the small-town shenanigans and memorable characters she knew growing up.

Kilpatrick earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Tennessee and taught high school Spanish for eight years before taking a sabattical to write and be a full-time mother. She later went back to school and earned a master’s degree in professional writing from Kennesaw State University.

Kilpatrick attended her first Georgia Romance Writers meeting in 2001 and went on to serve two years as president of the group. She has written five novels and won multiple awards, including the 2018 and 2019 Georgia Author of the Year, the Maggie Award of Excellence, the Booksellers’ Best and the 2016 Nancy Knight Award for Mentorship. She also was a finalist for the Golden Heart Award.

Sarah MacLean

Photo courtesy of Eric Mortensen

MacLean has written more than 13 historical romance novels and made bestseller lists with The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today. She has sold more than 1.5 million copies of her books, and they have been translated into more than 20 languages.

She is a leading advocate for the romance genre and romance columnist for The Washington Post and cohosts the “Fated Mates” weekly podcast. Her website leads with off with “I write books. There’s smooching in them.”

MacLean is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard University and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Hampton Sides

Photo courtesy of Gary Oakley

Sides is best known for his nonfiction adventure stories set in war or depictions of epic expeditions of discovery and exploration. He is the author of bestselling history books such as “Ghost Soldiers,” “Blood and Thunder,” “Hellhound on His Trail,” “In the Kingdom of Ice,” and more recently “On Desperate Ground,” which is a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by Marines during a key battle of the Korean War.

Sides is editor-at-large for Outside and a frequent contributor to National Geographic and other magazines. His journalism twice has been nominated for national magazine awards for feature writing.

He is a native of Memphis and graduate of Yale University. Sides is the 2015 Miller Distinguished Scholar at Sante Fe Institute and an advisory board member of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference and the Author’s Guild. He also is a partner of Atalaya Productions, an independent film company that develops nonfiction and historical stories for the screen.

Sides is a frequent lecturer and divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Colorado College, where  he teaches narrative nonfiction and serves as journalist in residence.

George Singleton

Singleton was born in Anaheim, California, and raised in Greenwood, South Carolina. He graduated from Furman University with a major in philosophy. He also earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Singleton has published eight collections of short stories, two novels and a book of writing advice. His stories also have appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine and The Southern Review.

He won the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence.

Singleton lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he teaches fiction writing and editing and holds the John C. Cobb Chair in Humanities at Wofford College.

Snowden Wright

Wright lived in New York City for nine years but moved back to Mississippi, where he was born and raised, to write his latest novel, “American Pop,” which explores history through the story of a rich family that owns a soft drink company.

“American Pop” was chosen as an Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and for the “Discover Great New Writers” program by Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

Wright, who lives in Atlanta, graduated from Dartmouth College and Columbia University and has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire and the New York Daily News, as well as other publications. He was awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the 2018 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

2020 SOUTHERN VOICES FESTIVAL

WHAT: A celebration of writing, music and art

WHERE: Hoover Public Library

WHEN: Feb. 18-22

WEB: hooverlibrary.org/sv

SCHEDULE AND COST:

TICKETS:

Photo courtesy of Hoover Public Library
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