Kia DuPree, Tonight!

Author Talk: Kia DuPree
Wednesday, February 24, 6 p.m.

Calling all urban fiction fans! Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Interim Library will host award-winning author Kia DuPree, who will talk about her new book, Damaged.

"Dupree's debut offers readers an unvarnished look at the troubled, violence-filled lives of inner-city youth in Washington, D.C., frequently through the eyes and experiences of Camille Logan. Ten-year-old Camille is placed with the Brinkleys, yet another foster family, where she suffers extreme mental and sexual abuse for years, until she's rescued by Chu, a low-level drug dealer who actually loves and looks after her. But when Chu is murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, Camille makes a desperate choice to join a cruel pimp's stable, where she faces her situation and struggles to change her life."1

DuPree, who now lives in Washington, D.C., was an assistant editor at St. Martin's Press in New York. In 2005 she received the Fiction Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for her debut novel, the self-published Robbing Peter. DuPree earned a B.A. in Mass Media Arts from Hampton University, as well as an M.A. in English from Old Dominion University.

Copies of Damaged will be available for purchase and for check out at the reading.

1Review: Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Author Talk: John Umana

Wednesday, August 6
7:00 p.m.

Tonight at Watha T. , local author John Umana, will give a public presentation about his book "Creation: Towards a Theory of All Things" concerning the debate between evolution theory and intelligent design, and speculation about life on Mars and other worlds.

Stop by and check it out!

Cormac McCarthy Rules!

So, you’ve seen the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men by now. You may have even rented the DVD and watched the extras. If you did, you probably remember the name Cormac McCarthy. I watched The Charlie Rose Show with the film's directors (The Cohen brothers) and actors and every other reference was to the extraordinary story-telling power and grace of the book's author, Cormac McCarthy. In fact it was more like Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy… Though the topic at hand was their recent Academy Awards, the actors and filmmakers kept coming back to McCarthy.

McCarthy tends to stick with the Southern Gothic and post-apocalyptic genres because that’s what he does best. Take for example another brilliantly dark novel by the author, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road. Think Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle mixed with Don DeLillo’s White Noise, but darker. The Road is a beautifully written, genuinely creepy post-apocalyptic dystopian tale of a father and son making their way across a barren wasteland after an unknown cataclysm has wiped every other living thing off the face of the earth. If, for the reader, modern times summon feelings of eminent doom, The Road is a thoroughly moving story, and truly not too dark for the casual reader, unless they are a casual reader of 'Desperate Housewives' novelizations. But seriously, please do check out The Road from my Staff Picks shelf at the Watha T. Daniel Interim Library. You'll be glad you did.