IF YOU’RE looking for a quick getaway this weekend to take a little break from Savannah, Jekyll Island is hosting an event you might be interested in.
The Jekyll Island Book Festival happens, Saturday, April 6, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the renovated Beach Village near the main entrance to this scenic Georgia barrier island about an hour and a half drive south of Savannah.
“We’re excited to introduce some notable and award-winning authors and we’ve expanded the festival, adding Authors’ Alley, to allow for even more genres and writers,” says Nancy Kring Rowan, Jekyll Island Authority director of events.
Multiple venues at Beach Village will feature author presentations and live music throughout the day. The Turtle Stage, overlooking the Village Green, will feature presentations from acclaimed authors.
Presenting authors include:
• Carla Hall, best known as a former co-host of ABC’s Emmy award-winning lifestyle series “The Chew,” is author of three cookbooks. Her latest, “Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration,” has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
• Todd Richards is an award-winning chef known for his contemporary cooking style rooted Southern cuisine and the author of “SOUL: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes.”
• Georgia-born, French-trained Chef Virginia Willis is the author of “Secrets of the Southern Table: A Food Lover’s Tour of the Global South” and is a James Beard Foundation Award of Excellence winner.
• Xhenet Aliu’s novel, “Brass,” was published by Random House in January 2018 and her debut fiction collection, “Domesticated Wild Things,” won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
• Taylor Brown, who grew up on the Georgia coast, is the author of a short story collection and three novels.
• Steven Nedvidek, Ed Crowell, and Jack Lowe imagine early 20th century action heroes battling anarchists in their award-winning alternate history graphic novel series, “The Jekyll Island Chronicles.”
Devereaux Bruch Eyler’s “No Mama, I Didn’t Die: My Life as a Stolen Baby,” is her true story of being abducted and sold to a wealthy family after her birth in 1937, then reconnecting with her family at age 71.
Additional book signings and readings scheduled include:
• Devereaux Eyler book signing at Wee Pub Stage, 11:30 a.m.-noon.
• Pinot and Poetry reading and signing with Kristin Robertson at the Westin Jekyll Island, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
• “Jekyll Island Chronicles” signing at Jekyll Market Stage, noon-1 p.m
