In its 2018 “Best of” issue, Atlanta magazine named the Atlanta History Center and Margaret Mitchell House the best venues for "story time for adults.” They credit Kate Whitman, vice president of author and family programs, for this recognition. In the accompanying story, the magazine quotes Kate as saying she has one simple goal: to put Atlanta on the map as a place where writers can connect with their readers.
The Atlanta History Center hosts numerous big name writers, historians, celebrity chefs, memoirists, news anchors, and the like, from Doris Kearns Goodwin to Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan. Atlanta magazine quotes Kate as saying she is addicted to getting “the ungettable.”
It’s been my privilege in the last handful of years to meet and get to know Kate. And I was thrilled when she invited me to moderate my first author event at the Margaret Mitchell House on February 27th. On tap for this evening were two authors from one of my favorite imprints, Algonquin Publishing. And of course, I brought along my trusty mobile microphone so I could record our chat for you.
These two generous writers covered:
- Their very different approaches to ratcheting up the tension in scenes;
- Placing young women characters in dangerous situations and writing them out of those circumstances;
- Imagining and describing what it would feel like to crash your car through the ice and into a dark, raging river in wintry northern Iowa; or
- To have your characters crash one of Gertrude Stein’s Bohemian dinner parties in 1920s Paris.
Enjoy this conversation with authors B. A. Shapiro and Tim Johnston.
About
The Collector's Apprentice (text provided by the publisher)
It’s the summer of 1922, and 19-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris—broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father’s art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George.
When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates—including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives . . . and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley’s murder.
B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector’s Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.
About B. A. Shapiro
B. A. Shapiro is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller The Art Forger and the bestseller The Muralist. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University and lives in Boston with her husband, Dan, and their dog, Sagan.
About
The Current (text provided by the publisher)
In the dead of winter, outside a small Minnesota town, state troopers pull two young women and their car from the icy Black Root River. One is found downriver, drowned, while the other is found at the scene—half frozen but alive.
What happened was no accident, and news of the crime awakens the community’s memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may still live among them.
Determined to find answers, the surviving young woman soon realizes that she’s connected to the earlier unsolved case by more than just a river, and the deeper she plunges into her own investigation, the closer she comes to dangerous truths, and to the violence that simmers just below the surface of her hometown.
Grief, suspicion, the innocent and the guilty—all stir to life in this cold northern town where a young woman can come home, but still not be safe. Brilliantly plotted and unrelentingly propulsive, The Current is a beautifully realized story about the fragility of life, the power of the past, and the need, always, to fight back.
About Tim Johnston
Tim Johnston, a native of Iowa City, is the author of The Current and the New York Times bestseller Descent, as well as a young adult novel, Never So Green, and the story collection Irish Girl, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.
Links to Sites, Articles and Events Mentioned in This Episode
B. A. Shapiro Author Website
Tim Johnston Author Website
“Best of Atlanta 2018: Arts & Culture” Atlanta magazine
March 11th - Lynne Olson at Atlanta History Center
March 11th - Howard Schultz at the Carter Center - SOLD OUT
March 11th - Barbara Brown Taylor at First Baptist Church Decatur
March 11th - Mike Lemonick, Chief Opinion Editor at Scientific American, headlines an Atlanta Science Festival event at Manuel's Tavern
March 12th - Keith O'Brien at Posman Books
March 13th - Greg Iles at FoxTale Book Shoppe
March 13th - Keith O'Brien at Little Shop of Stories
March 13th - Atlanta Science Festival Panel at Decatur Library Auditorium
March 14th - An Evening with Randall Kenan at Margaret Mitchell House
March 14th - Nancy MacLean at Decatur Library Auditorium
March 14th - Poetry @ Tech Presents Bruce McEver, Chelsea Rathburn, and Juan Felipe Hererra
March 19th - Frances Mayes at Atlanta History Center
April 5th - Neil Patrick Harris at Agnes Scott College - SOLD OUT
April 23rd - Finding My Voice: Valerie Jarrett and Stacey Abrams - SOLD OUT
Upcoming Live Literary Atlanta Events and Workshops
March 16th – Alison Law and Karin Pendley Koser present “Analog to Digital: How to Craft Stories for Audio and Video” at the Decatur Writers Studio
April 6th – Alison Law presents “Brand Yourself Like a Bestseller: How to Establish Your Reputation as a Working Writer (Even Before Your Work Has Been Published)” and “Social Media Tips and Tools for Writers” at the 22nd Annual Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference
April 9th – Writers at the Wrecking Bar Presents Jessica Handler, author of The Magnetic Girl
April 13th – Lost Southern Voices Festival
May 9th – Writers at the Wrecking Bar Presents Michael Knight, author of At Briarwood School for Girls
June 15th – Inaugural Atlanta Writers Club/Gwinnett County Book Festival
Books Mentioned in This Episode
The Collector's Apprentice by B. A. Shapiro
The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro
The Current by Tim Johnston
Descent by Tim Johnston
