With February right around the corner, it’s a great time to think about adding an author event to your programming for Black History Month. Here are a few wonderful authors, with award-winning titles we’ve been recommending.
Edward Kelsey Moore, author of The Supreme’s at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. A New York Times best-selling author, a professional cellist and a music professor, Edward Kelsey Moore’s first book spent seven months in a row on Amazon’s “Best Books of the Month” list, and was picked for the Independent Bookseller’s IndieNEXT list. Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is home away from home for three inseparable Plainview, Indiana, women. Dubbed “the Supremes” by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they weather life’s storms together for four decades.
Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones and Where the Line Bleeds. Jesmyn Ward is a stunning writer on the rise. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds was an Essence Magazine Book Club Selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Her second novel, Salvage the Bones, won the 2011 National Book Award and follows a family of mother-less children in the wake of a devastating hurricane.
Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore. Two kids with the same name, living in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House fellow and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. The Other Wes Moore is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moment of surprising redemption, Wes Moore’s books speaks of a generation of young people trying to find their way in a challenging, and at times, hostile world.
