*All events previously schedule in the Sandy Spring Bank Tent have been relocated to the Johnson Center Bistro on the ground floor of the Johnson Center, near Starbucks. Volunteers will be available as guides*
Thursday at Fall for the Book is chock full of events to whet your appetite and pique your imagination. At George Mason’s Fairfax Campus, see novelists Emily St. John Mandel and Angela Flournoy, gender scholar Leora Tanenbaum and a panel with stars of the academic publishing and grant writing world. If you’re a lover of eating and writing about food, head out to the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas for our third annual Haute Cuisine at the Hylton event. Also, don’t miss presidential biographer Jonathan Horn at Oakton Library.
10:30 a.m.
Historian Angela Pulley Hudson, Johnson Center Meeting Room C
Historian Angela Pulley Hudson’s new book, Real Native Genius: How an Ex-slave and a White Mormon became Famous Indians, chronicles the fascinating and scandalous journey of an unlikely couple as they perform for audiences across the continent while passing as Native Americans. Pulley Hudson offers an illuminating reading of the complex relationship between gender, race and religion in North America in the nineteenth century. Sponsored by Department of History and Art History.
Noon
Sports Journalist Elisa Gaudet, Johnson Center Meeting Room C
Elisa A. Gaudet
Elisa A. Gaudet has spent the past 15 years working in the golf industry in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. She has published many articles as well as three books in the Two Good Rounds series: Two Good Rounds – 19th Hole Stories from the World’s Greatest Golfers, Two Good Rounds Superstars– Golf Stories from the World’s Greatest Athletes, and her newest addition, Two Good Rounds Titans: Leaders in Industry & Golf, which continues the exploration of golf and the feel-good golf lifestyle by navigating the connection between golf and business as conveyed by an array of successful leaders from a variety of industries.
1:30 p.m.
Rebel Music Scholar Hisham Aidi, Research Building 1, Room 163
Hisham Aidi is the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture, in which he draws connections between music and political activism among Muslim youths around the world. The New York Times says, “‘Rebel Music’ exhibits a breathtaking familiarity with different forms of radicalizing music.” The Washington Postcalls Aidi’s book “brilliant, [and] utterly unique.” Sponsored by the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies.
3 p.m.
Gender Scholar Leora Tanenbaum, Research Building 1, Room 163
In 1999, Leora Tanenbaum coined the term “slut-bashing” to describe the phenomenon of women and girls verbally abusing each other. Now, her new book, I Am Not A Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet takes her study of this behavior online, discussing how the term “slut” has come to mean both good and bad things, and why it just needs to go. Called one of the 20 “must read” books for women byEcosalon, I Am Not A Slut has been widely listed on women and gender study, and sociology book lists.
Historian David O. Stewart, Johnson Center Bistro, Ground Floor near Starbucks
David O. Stewart
The Washington Post has called historian David O. Stewart “an acknowledged master of narrative history” for his recent book, Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. In his thoroughly researched and illustrative account, Stewart restores the often overshadowed Founding Father, James Madison, to the place in history his accomplishments of framing the new nation deserve. Stewart is also a novelist, and his latest book is The Wilson Deception, a novel set around President Wilson’s visit to Paris at the end of WWI. Stewart discusses the unique place he occupies as a writer straddling the border between the worlds of fiction and non-fiction.
Novelist Angela Flournoy, Johnson Center Meeting Room C
Angela Flournoy is the debut author of the critically-acclaimed novel The Turner House, which has been described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a lively, thoroughly engaging family saga with a cast of fully realized characters,” and has been chosen as a Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editor’s Choice. Sponsored by African and African American Studies.
4:30 p.m.
Peter Trachtenberg
Memoirist and Essayist Peter Trachtenberg, Research Building 1, Room 163
In his newest book, Another Insane Devotion, Peter Trachtenberg follows the trail of his missing cat, Biscuit, at once pondering the history of cats, the roots of their intelligence, and how his love for a feline intertwines with his failing love of his wife. The New York Times calls Trachtenberg “an impish and intelligent essayist, his writing sinuous and sensual.” Peter Trachtenberg is the George Mason Visiting Writer in non-fiction this fall.
Novelist and Short-Story Writer Rebecca Makkai, Johnson Center Bistro, Ground Floor near Starbucks
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novels The Hundred-Year House, winner of the Chicago Writers Association’s Novel of the Year award, and The Borrower, a Booklist Top Ten Debut. The Boston Globe says her new short story collection, Music for Wartime, is “characterized by a striking blend of whimsy and poignancy, elegy and ebullience.”
6 p.m.
George Mason M.F.A. Alumni Reading, Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Alumni of George Mason University’s M.F.A. program join together to give one heck of a reading. Readers are poet Alyse Knorr, author of Annotated Glass and Copper Mother, poet Sandra Marchetti, author of Confluence, poet Siwar Masannat, author of50 Water Dreams, short story-writer Rion Amilcar Scott, author of Wolf Tickets, and short story-writer and novelist, Art Taylor, author of On the Road with Del and Louise.
Novelist Steve Himmer, Research Building 1, Room 163
Novelist Steve Himmer travels through the mazes of bureaucracy and Arctic exploration in his novel, Fram. Publishers Weekly says, “Himmer’s story is fun and exhilarating, especially as it heads toward its heroic climax.” His debut novel, The Bee-Loud Glade was called “hypnotic” and “heartfelt” by author Frederick Reiken.
6:30 p.m.
Academic Publishing and Research Grant Submission Panel Discussion, Johnson Center Meeting Room C
Cheryl Ball
In the highly competitive world of academic publishing and grant writing, knowing how to succeed is crucial. Panelist Cheryl Ball just won a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop an open source editorial management system, EditMe. Huiling Ding’s research focuses on intercultural professional communication. She has been awarded a long list of research grants, including over $35,000 in 2006 from Purdue. Jeffrey Grabill researches and publishes widely on writing practices across public, workplace, and classroom communities, focusing specifically on digital writing. Sponsored by the GMU Society for Technical Communication.
Haute Cuisine at the Hylton, Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Circle, Manassas, VA
Fall for the Book’s third annual celebration of fine food and drink and the act of writing about it begins with a 6:30 p.m. food-writing workshop with Jason Shriner, a food blogger, chef, and instructor whose blog, The Aubergine Chef, was recognized byEvery Day with Rachael Ray magazine. Tastings and demonstrations will follow at 7 p.m. Participants include Monica Bhide, author of the cookbook Modern Spice and the collection of food-inspired essays A Life of Spice; Sheilah Kaufman, award-winning cookbook author and expert on Mediterranean cuisine; Beryl Loveland, owner of Beryl’s Cake Decorating and Pastry Supplies; and representatives from Mom’s Apple Pie Company, Desert Rose Ranch and Winery, Manassas Olive Oil Company, Monument Coffee Roasters, Heritage Brewing Company, Mum Mum Thai Restaurant, and Zandra’s Taqueria. Sponsored by Write by the Rails.
7 p.m.
aois21 annual Reading, One More Page Books, 2200 N. Westmoreland Street, #101, Arlington, VA
aois21 publishing of Mount Vernon, VA, is releasing their second literary magazine, theaois21 annual, with a celebration of all those that made it possible. Contributors will be invited to read from their submissions, and supporters of the magazine’s crowd funding campaign will be honored as featured guests. The event is open to the public and will also be webcast live on Periscope (@aois21). Video of the event will be available on YouTube the day after.
Biographer Jonathan Horn, Oakton Library, 10304 Lynnhaven Place, Oakton, VA
Jonathan Horn, the former White House presidential speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush has written a bestselling biography of Robert E. Lee with The Man Who Would Not Be Washington. Sponsored by Friends of the Oakton Library.
7:30 p.m.
Emily St. John Mandel
Featured Author: Novelist Emily St. John Mandel, Johnson Center Cinema, George Mason University
New York Times bestselling author, Emily St. John Mandel, will read from her newest post-apocalyptic, genre-bending novel, Station Eleven, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award, and was listed as a top ten book of the year by The Washington Post and Time Magazine.
Memoirist Harrison Scott Key, Research Building 1, Room 163
A humor columnist for Oxford American, Harrison Scott Key is the author of the heavily-praised The World’s Largest Man: A Memoir, the story of a bookish Mississippi boy and his larger-than-life father that has been described by Library Journal as reading like “fiction that is too crazy to be anything but truth.”
Poet and Essayist Lia Purpura, Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Lia Purpura, the award-winning author of three collections of poetry and three collections of essays—including, On Looking, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award—has a fourth collection of poetry titled It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful,the poems in which Mary Ruefle has described as “simple and compact as seeds, [yielding] pleasures as gigantic and wondrous as sunflowers.”
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For the full listing of the rest of the week’s events, visit fallforthebook.org or download our free app, which is now available in the iTunes and GooglePlay stores.