E-book-lovers gathering at a earlier Decatur E-book Pageant. (Photograph by Megan Varner)
This month, the organizers of the Decatur E-book Pageant introduced Saeed Jones and Angie Thomas this 12 months’s keynote and “kidnote” audio system, respectively, giving bookish Atlantans extra causes to anticipate the beloved occasion. Each Jones and Thomas are identified for his or her activism and writing about social justice themes, working to advertise empathy by means of sharing their struggles and joys with honesty and hope.
This isn’t a coincidence, in line with the Pageant’s government director, Leslie Wingate, who says organizers needed to offer a balm for the customarily overwhelming concern and uncertainty of current years. “We’re doing every little thing we will in each facet of our programming, not simply our writer programming, to instill that sense of belonging and neighborhood on this Pageant,” Wingate mentioned.
That dedication to neighborhood made Jones — award-winning writer of three celebrated books, most not too long ago the poetry assortment Alive on the Finish of the World (Espresso Home Press, 2022) — an ideal alternative for this 12 months’s keynote occasion.
However the challenge that introduced Jones to Pageant organizers’ consideration this 12 months was the forthcoming Energy to the Individuals: Poems, Essays, and Artwork for Wanting Ahead (Simon & Schuster, September 2025), an anthology of poetry, essays and artwork aimed toward cultivating goal, neighborhood and hope in a troubled period, which Jones curated alongside author Maggie Smith.
Thomas additionally advocates for neighborhood in her work, specializing in tales of Black kids and youngsters wrestling with racism and systemic violence alongside friendship, crushes and household strife. Her first e-book, The Hate U Give (Clarion, 2017), was a large hit, crossing over from YA to grownup readers and finally being tailored for the massive display in 2018. Her latest e-book, Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The E-book of Anansi (Clarion), scheduled for launch in September, is the second installment in a deliberate middle-grade fantasy trilogy.
Thomas mentioned that she sees books “as a type of activism. If nothing else, books give us a glimpse into lives that we might not have identified about earlier than; they will promote empathy.”
Now greater than ever, Wingate mentioned, books are a crucial supply of consolation, and the Pageant as a “place of neighborhood.”
“I used to be on a name with somebody” she mentioned, “and so they mentioned the Pageant looks like a giant hug — you already know, when hugs are wanted probably the most. And I simply thought that was the right depiction.”
The Decatur E-book Pageant will happen round downtown Decatur on October 3 and October 4 and embody writer signings, panels and readings, together with reveals, stay music, cooking demonstrations, meals and actions, a lot of which can be introduced within the coming months.
Jones will seem Friday, October 3, in the Sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Decatur in dialogue with three contributors to The Individuals’s Challenge: poet Tiana Clark and native writers Victoria Chang and Aruni Kashyap. Thomas will seem the identical day, at Agnes Scott School’s Presser Corridor, in a dialogue with Atlanta literacy advocate FeFe Useful. Each occasions are free, however reservations are really helpful.
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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State College and an MA from the College School Dublin, each in artistic writing. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is at the moment at work on a novel.