Is this beautiful pup the one entering all the new data into the Libby library app?
“Libby is currently training to be our first canine librarian. She will officially join our staff in August. Check back here for a schedule of Libby’s appearances and to find ways to support Libby’s adoption.”
August seems so far away now. Can’t wait to hear more! If you’d like to keep up with the library, you can check out the site or follow them on all the social channels. They also have a fun Friends of the Library store you should check out if you’re in the Hoover, AL area. They have great prices.
Founded in 2014, the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame is the highest honor an Alabama author can receive from the state. The 2023 inductees are Tom Franklin, Trudier Harris, Angela Johnson, Howell Raines, Michelle Richmond, and Daniel Wallace (Daniel Wallace has a very good book coming out in April that I mentioned in a previous post).
Authors Eugene Walter and Kathryn Tucker Windham will be inducted posthumously.
Billed as a ‘gala event,’ this year’s proceedings will be overseen by Harper Lee Award winner Carolyn Haines. The dinner features food and cocktails by Eugene Walter, who was famous for hosting parties with Truman Capote way back when.
Official promotion image created by the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame
This is the first in-person gathering held by the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame since before the pandemic.
During that event, they inducted seven Alabama authors. The 2020 class included Mark Childress, Faye Gibbons, Carolyn Haines, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Michael Knight, with authors Ralph Ellison and Zelda Fitzgerald being inducted posthumously.
Here is a list of all the past Alabama Writers Hall of Fame inductees:
The 2018 Inductee List
Joseph Glover Baldwin
William Bradford Huie
Shirley Ann Grau
Gay Talese
Wayne Greenhaw
Charles Gaines
James Haskins
Winston Groom
The 2016 Inductee List
E. O. Wilson
Fannie Flagg
Rodney Jones
Rebecca Gilman
Truman Capote
T.S. Stribling
Margaret Walker
Mary Ward Brown
Sequoyah
The 2015 Inductee List
Rick Bragg
Andrew Glaze
Johnson Jones Hooper
Zora Neale Hurston
Helen Keller
Harper Lee
William March
Albert Murray
Sena Jeter Naslund
Helen Norris Bell
Sonia Sanchez
Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
I assume that no one was inducted in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, which is perfectly understandable. I have looked and looked, and I can not find a mention of why there were no Alabama Writers Hall of Fame classes for the years 2017 and 2019. If you know why that is, chime in and let a curious book blogger know.
The Little Professor bookstore in downtown Homewood is moving again. This time it’s relocating down the street to the old Nadeau building, located at 2738 18th St. S, which puts it across the street from a previous location which is now the big new Valley Hotel. As reported in the Homewood Star, the store owners plan to open the new spot sometime this spring. The Little Professor also has a shop in Pepper Place.
No doubt this will be a good move with lots of foot traffic as their sign will be staring every hotel guest in the face as they check-in. I hope Homewood addresses the walkability of that intersection, though. You can spend what feels like half of a lifetime waiting there to cross. There is so much car traffic. I’m excited to see how The Little Professor solves the parking issue there as well.
According to the piece in the Homewood Star, it sounds like The Little Professor owners will use this second move (they moved to their current location in 2017) to update their stock and fixtures.
I remember Nadeau having their mezzanine level. Wouldn’t it be fun if The Little Professor brought back their mezzanine of used books? I never sold anything to them, but I always enjoyed shopping those used shelves.
They will also have a new outdoor space to sit and chat over coffee. According to that Homewood Star article, the new location will house about 20% more inventory, about 50% more seating space, and a larger children’s area.
Here’s to another wonderful move in downtown Homewood. Book people are the best, and as impressive as the Pepper Place store is, I am excited to see what the owners of The Little Professor create in their new Homewood location.
The folks from Thank You Books will be there too, selling Flynt’s book so you can walk out with a signed copy as well as get to hear from one of Alabama’s best historians and storytellers. Flynt’s books are always some of the best-researched and poignant.
Cover design by Randall Williams
Wayne Flynt and Harper Lee were longtime friends, so he knows the very private novelist well enough to write a book like this. It sounds like most of the stories and reflections come from his visiting Lee during the last years of her life (she died in 2016). No doubt Flynt has some unique insights to share from all of his discussions with Lee.
Afternoons with Harper Lee is published by New South Books which was recently acquired by the University of Georgia Press. While it’s sad that Alabama lost a publisher it is great to see that they have landed somewhere as srong as the UGA Press program is.
I love this praise quote that is inside the book:
“Wayne Flynt is the great Talmudic scholar of Alabama, and this vivid, affecting deconstruction of his friendship with Harper Lee through the history that produced them both is a huge reward and pleasure for those of us who understand that, unaccountably, all roads seem to lead to our grand and terrifying state.” – Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama–The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
