Photo courtesy of the Savannah Book Festival
Written by Amy Stoltenberg
Award winning author Paula McLain will give the opening address at this year’s Savannah Book Festival, an event whose aimed to encourage the public to read, write and engage in civic conversation.
Paula McLain, also a poet, has published three novels, two collections of poetry, and a memoir. She is perhaps best known for her New York Times bestselling novel called “The Paris Wife,” which is written in the voice of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. “The Paris Wife” follows the turbulent, passionate lives of Ernest and Hadley as part of “The Lost Generation” of Paris during the jazz age.
Her most recent novel, released in August 2015, is called “Circling the Sun,” and is about Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to West. Strong female characters are one of McLain’s authorial trademarks.
McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. Her memoir, “Like Family, Growing up in Other People’s Houses,” is about her experiences growing up in the foster system when their parents abandoned her and her two sisters. After she left the system, McLain worked a variety of jobs to support herself until she discovered that she could write — and that she was good at it. In 1996, she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The opening address by McLain will take place in the Trustees theater at 6:00 p.m., and will be followed by a book signing. Tickets to attend are $15.
The annual Savannah Book Festival will take place in Forsyth Park, and will run from February 11-14. The festival is free to the public.
