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“GWTW” author’s evolution on race provides a fascinating focal point for new GPB “Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel” doc premiering tonight

Perhaps like many "Gone With the Wind" weary Atlantans, GPB executive director Teya Ryan openly admits to being "lukewarm" to producing an in-house original documentary on the life and career of the novel's Atlanta author Margaret Mitchell. "I thought the idea was kind of old, kind of passe," Ryan said during a recent advance media screening of the beautifully produced film directed and written by Pamela Roberts. The documentary premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on GPB followed at 9 p.m. with an encore presentation and a simultaneous online chat with Roberts on GPB.org.

Q&A: Melissa Fay Greene

In her family's longtime home near Emory Village, Melissa Fay Greene, fifty-eight, reflected on her new book, No Biking in the House without a Helmet, and talked about the joys and pitfalls of parenting—and writing about it.

The Shelf: Man Martin

Man Martin Man Martin’s second novel proves his first was no fluke. Martin won the 2008 Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel with Days of the Endless Corvette. That debut was so solid, a sophomore slump seemed almost inevitable. But

Actress-author Carolyn Hennesy dishes on her two new books, daytime and primetime TV roles

Most writers only dream of one day hitting the New York Times best-seller list, let alone writing a book that will debut at number 10. Author-actress Carolyn Hennesy hit that particular milestone this month with her "General Hospital" tie-in tome, "The Secret Life of Damian Spinelli." The only problem? The New York Times incorrectly listed her "GH" mob lawyer doppelganger Diane Miller as the book's author. But thanks to her more than 27,000 followers on Twitter (who immediately began tweeting about it ) and one well-placed phone call to the Times, Hennesy is now officially listed as the book's author.

The Shelf: Tayari Jones

“My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” Tayari Jones begins her third novel, Silver Sparrow (Algonquin Books). That one line telegraphs all sorts of family dysfunction and tragedy, but the author reins in the melodrama nicely to produce a surprisingly subtle story about class, gender roles, and combustible secrets. The bigamist father does his best to ensure that his two wives and his two daughters—born four months apart—never meet. But of course, they do. The collision of the families is so clearly inevitable, the only mystery is when it will happen, not if.  Jones, who grew up in Atlanta and teaches now at Rutgers University, tells this story through the eyes of the teenage daughters: Chaurisse is the “legitimate” one, enjoying a fairly privileged life, while Dana, the “secret” one, watches from the shadows, strangely powerful in one sense: She and her mother at least know about the existence of the other family. “I feel like I live in both of their shoes,” Jones says of writing in the girls’ voices. “I was a daughter in a family of sons, so I know what it is not to be the chosen one, but at the same time feeling loved.” As with her previous novels, Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, Jones sets this one in 1980s Atlanta. “The expression is, ‘You can never go home again,’” she says. “But I think it should be, ‘You can never leave home.’”*

The Shelf: Lang Whitaker

Lang Whitaker Lang Whitaker is living every sports fanatic’s dream: He writes about sports as executive editor of Slam, a basketball magazine, and covers the subject in blog posts and features for other magazines. A longtime Atlantan, Whitaker moved in 20

The Shelf: Burial for a King

Burial for a King In Burial for a King: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Funeral and the Week That Transformed Atlanta and Rocked the Nation

The Shelf: Top Ten of 2010

BEST AUDIO BOOK Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson (Grand Central Publishing) Jackson’s previous life as an actress serves her fourth novel well, lending just the

The Shelf: Richard Jay Hutto

Richard Jay Hutto The rich may be different from you and me, but often it’s the rich wannabes who are downright twisted. In A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia (Lyons P

The Shelf: Pat Conroy

"I gather stories the way a sunburned entomologist admires his well-ordered bottles of Costa Rican beetles,” Pat Conroy writes in My Reading Life (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $25). “I am often called ‘a storyteller’ by flippant and unadmiring critics. I revel in the title.”

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