Category Archives: Alabama

Alabama Writers Hall of Fame – Class of 2023

The Alabama Writers Hall of Fame will induct its 2023 class during a march 10th dinner in Tuscaloosa. Tickets start at $150 per plate if you’re eating. The occasion begins at 6 p.m. with cocktails and dinner at 7 p.m.

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.

Alabama Writers Hall of Fame images
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.

Little Professor Book Center is Moving to New Location

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.

Join Wayne Flynt as he talks about his new book & friend Harper Lee

Hey Birmingham, AL book readers and history buffs… I just saw that Wayne Flynt is speaking this weekend at the Avondale public library. It’s a free event (Flynt is on a 40-city book tour) where he’ll discuss and answer questions about his book Afternoons with Harper Lee. 

The event is:

  • Sunday, February 26, 2023
  • 2:00 pm–3:00 pm
  • Avondale Library
  • 509 40th Street South

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. 

wayne flynt book about harper lee
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

Have a good weekend, everyone!

News Article on Alabama Indie Bookstores

It’s always good when indie bookstores get a shout out in the media. It’s even better when they’re local and close by! A few weeks agao teh folks at AL.com did an article featuring 12 independent bookstores in Alabama to check out, and it was a pretty good slate of shops (though more photos of the indie stores would have been even better, but I digress…).

There are quite a few familiar names on there, but I was pleasnatly surprised to see two shops that I’ve not run across before.

Sweet Home Indie bookstore
Sweet Home Books offers lots of fun themed collections.

Sweet Home Books is just down I-65 in Wetumpka. Road trip anyone? The Al.com article says they are very new, but you can see they are on Instagram and facebook promoting their books and a celebrating a few authors. Their site also has a section called Middle Grade Books for Creators, which is a wonderfully curated list of kids’ titles. This looks like a shop that is worth checking out.

The other shop that is new to me is Shades Of Pemberley Bookstore, in Albertville, AL. It sounds like the perfect weekend stop to go through shelves of used and old books, looking for a unique read. They are on facebook as well.

Love the storefront at Shades of Pemberly!

The whole AL.com article is worth a scan and no doubt these shops are worth a visit. When you’re done with their article, be sure to check out all of the Birmingham-area bookstores.