Writers: sharpen your skills at a free workshop sponsored by Pellissippi State Community College and set for Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, at the college’s Strawberry Plains campus.

The Young Creative Writers’ Workshop (YCWW) is designed for young writers (middle- or high-school and college age). But it’s open to the community. The theme is Celebrating Afrilachia. Earlier story here.

Angela Jackson-Brown, an associate professor of English at Indiana University, holds degrees from Troy University (1992), Auburn University (1996) and Spalding University (2009). An award-winning writer, poet and playwright, Jackson-Brown will give the keynote address at lunch, lead a workshop and meet with participants one-on-one in the Writer’s Room.

Her books

Untethered: Sometimes family is found in the most unlikely of places … This novel is the tale of a woman torn between the demands of her heart and the responsibilities she’s shouldered for so long. Set against the backdrop of a changing South, the story delves into the complexities of love, family and self-discovery in a time of transformation and upheaval. To be released by HarperCollins on December 3, 2024.

Homeward: The country is changing, and her own world is being turned upside down. Nothing – and no one – will ever be the same. Released October 10, 2023. Set in 1962, Rose Perkins Bourdon returns home to Parsons, Georgia, without her husband and pregnant with another man’s baby. Her sister introduces her to members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – young people taking risks and fighting battles Rose has only seen on television.

The Light Always Breaks: Set in 1947, Eva Cardon, 24, owns Washington, D.C.’s, most famous Black-owned restaurant. She meets Courtland, the white junior senator from Georgia whose family is pushing him toward the White House. … The danger of a relationship between a Black woman and a white man from the South could destroy them and everything they’ve worked for.

When Stars Rain Down: The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt senses a nameless storm brewing. She is about to turn 18 while the town celebrates Founders’ Day. But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal’s neighborhood, the tight-knit community is shaken. Residents both Black and white must acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post-Reconstruction era town.

Drinking from a Bitter Cup: “1978. The year I turned 10 and the year my mama killed herself. She was 35, and dying is the last thing that should have been on her mind.” After the death of her mother, Sylvia Butler’s father, a man she knows only from an old photo, takes her to Ozark, Alabama, to live with his family. But his wife resents everything about this intruder, from her out-of-wedlock conception to her dark skin and nappy hair.

House Repairs: Debut collection of poetry released August 3, 2018. Reviewer Robert Gray writes: “Good poetry makes you think or feel deeply; great poetry makes you do both. And great poetry … happens where life happens, down in the midst of things, in the spaces between our hearts. Angela Jackson-Brown’s House Repairs, is great poetry. In it you will find what makes poetry necessary. You will find honesty and pain, beauty and atonement, where the power of strangled and realized possibility sings…”