Fire and Ink

Fire & Ink Presents!
10 a.m.-12 noon Saturday, August 30, 2008
W Hotel Atlanta Midtown, 188 14th St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30309

So far this year Fire & Ink Presents! has been working to produce outstanding literary events at seven different Black Pride celebrations. We’ve had a great time presenting dozens of authors in Washington, D.C.; Newark, New Jersey; Portland, Oregon; St. Louis, Missouri;  and Nashville, Tennessee.

Don’t miss us this weekend in Atlanta where the lineup promises to melt those Georgia peaches into juicy cobbler.

Reading from their latest books are:

• E. Patrick Johnson (Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History)
• Fiona Zedde (Hungry for It)
• G. Winston James (The Damaged Good; Voices Rising)
• Laurinda D. Brown (The Highest Price for Passion)
• Michael-Christopher (Unspeakable)

E. Patrick Johnson is professor, chair and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies and professor in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar/artist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance. His books include Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, (Duke University Press, 2003), which won the Lilla A. Heston Award, the Errol Hill Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (co-authored with Mae G. Henderson, Duke University Press, 2005); and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). He is touring in a one-man show based on the narratives in Sweet Tea. He hails from Hickory, North Carolina.

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History is a collection of oral histories from black gay men who were born, raised and continue to live in the South. The men hail from fifteen different states and range in age from 19 to 93. E. Patrick Johnson will read from the oral history of Atlanta’s own Duncan Teague.

Fiona Zedde lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia with her partner. She is the author of the novels Bliss, A Taste of Sin, Every Dark Desire, and Hungry for It, as well as the novellas “Pure Pleasure,” “Going Wild” and the soon-to-be-published “Sweat,” which appear in the collections Satisfy Me, Satisfy Me Again, and Satisfy Me One More Time, respectively. Find out more at www.fionazedde.com.

In Hungry for It, her newest novel, Zedde presents Rémi Bouchard. With good looks, limitless sex appeal, and the wealth and popularity that comes from owning the city’s hottest jazz bar and restaurant, Rémi Bouchard can have anyone she wants. Lately though, the allure of wild one-night stands and no-strings flings is starting to wear thin. Rémi craves something more. At her best friend’s wedding, she looks across the crowd and finds exactly what she’s been searching for—an intense, soul-searing connection. But passion this deep has its dangers—especially when it means falling in love with the one person who should be off limits.

G. Winston James is a Jamaican-born poet, short fiction writer, essayist and editor. He holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and is the author of the poetry collections The Damaged Good and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Lyric: Poems Along a Broken Road. James is a co-editor of Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity, and lead editor of Voices Rising: Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing.

With The Damaged Good, Lambda Literary Award nominated author G. Winston James returns to the literary landscape with a raw, moving poetry collection of searing, unapologetic honesty. Homophobia, sex, desire, longing and liberation mark the terrain of these terse, often unsettling poems. From the unwelcoming streets of Kingston, Jamaica to the parks of Brooklyn, New York, G. Winston James skillfully chronicles new times in black and gay history. The Damaged Good is one of the bravest, most authentic collections of poetry in years.

Laurinda D. Brown uses her writing to tell universal stories that apply to all cross-sections of society. She is the author of six novels, Fire & Brimstone, UnderCover, Walk Like a Man, Strapped, The Cathouse, and The Highest Price for Passion, and a contributing author to Zane’s Purple Panties. In 2007, Laurinda won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Erotica with her book of short stories, Walk Like a Man, which became a critically acclaimed stage play now in its third year of production. A graduate of Howard University, she writes about life, not lifestyles. She currently resides in the Atlanta metro area with her two daughters and her partner of twelve years, Charlotte.

The Highest Price for Passion: A century of unrest equals ten decades of change. The Highest Price for Passion uses as background one hundred years of the most volatile era to divide American soil, interspersed with the uncontrollable fervor from the unlikeliest of sources—when both master and mistress vie for the affections of a slave too beautiful to destroy, with a quiet intelligence neither can outwit.

This year, Michael-Christopher celebrates ten years of self-publishing success. Since 1998, Michael has written, illustrated and published a graphic novel compilation and three literary novels, including the Living the Life series and the critically acclaimed From Top to Bottom. A graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Michael plans forthcoming collections of photography and sketches and the seventh installation in his graphic novel series. Unspeakable is Michael-Christopher’s fourth novel.

In Unspeakable, Rodney Franklin seeks the comfort of family and friends in his hometown of Philadelphia following a breakup with his partner. While reconnecting with his past, Rodney discovers he and a childhood friend both share a disturbing experience—they were both victims of child molestation at the hands of the same depraved man. In their attempt to right the wrongs of the past, Rodney and his friends find themselves in very present trouble. Amidst it all, Rodney’s old flame, Katrina, enters the picture in hopes of resuming her role as damsel in distress, but this time around, she finds Rodney is not the man she once knew.

Read more: “NEWS RELEASE: Fire & Ink Hosts ITLA Literary Café”