The Lit Center at the Margaret Mitchell House offers a variety of lectures throughout the year showcasing award-winning authors who share insight into their latest publication.
Admission for all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and FREE to Annual Fund donors, unless otherwise noted.
Reservations are requested for all lectures.
For more information or to purchase tickets, please call 404.814.4150.
All lecture ticket sales are non-refundable.
The Lit Center at the Margaret Mitchell House
990 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
August | September | November | December
 Emma Thompson
Nanny McPhee Returns
Thursday, August 12, 2010
2:30 PM
In wartime England, the two very spoiled Gray children are being sent to stay in the country with their very numerous and ill-behaved cousins, the Greens. Enter Nanny McPhee, who discovers that Mrs. Green and the children are fighting another war altogether—against scheming relatives who are intent on taking their farm while Mr. Green is off fighting in the war. Nanny McPhee must use her magic to teach her mischievous charges five new lessons, or losing the farm will be the least of their problems.
Emma Thompson is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning actress who helped bring the Nurse Matilda stories by Christianna Brand to the big screen in the 2005 hit movie Nanny McPhee, and stars in the upcoming Nanny McPhee Returns (in theaters August 20). She lives in England and is the mother of two children.
This family-friendly event is free. Atlanta History Center members, please make a reservation by calling 404.814.4112. Space is limited so RSVP today!
Limited tickets will be available to nonmembers at the Margaret Mitchell House one hour prior to the reading and will be offered first-come, first-served.
Pearl Cleage
Till You Hear From Me
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
7:00 PM
From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Pearl Cleage, the acclaimed author of Oprah’s book club pick What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day comes Till You Hear From Me. The novel showcases Cleage’s singular talent for capturing the heart, soul and rhythm of America in a pitch-perfect snapshot of a young woman caught at the intersection of Obamamerica and the legendary Civil Rights freedom movement, between personal loyalties and political realities.
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Jonathan Safran Foer
Eating Animals
Presented by Literary Center at Margaret Mitchell House.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
7:00 PM
Eating Animals is a carefully researched, artfully told, funny, and personal exploration of what we eat and why, how what we eat affects our lives and the environment, and how every individual can make seemingly small choices that will enact big change. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the acclaimed novel Everything Is Illuminated, delves into the environmental and social effects of factory farming and relates personal storiesthat influenced his decisions to become a vegetarian. Eating Animals will move readers-and eaters- of every persuasion to participate in the ongoing conversation about what we eat and challenge them to take a naked look at what is too often convenently brushed aside.
This lecture is held at Atlanta History Center.
Sara Gruen
Ape House
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
7:00 PM
Sara Gruen, the bestselling author of Water for Elephants, returns with another engaging novel in which a family of apes teaches us what it means to be human. When a family of Bonobo apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA. Ape House is a deeply moving new novel that secures Sara Gruen’s place as a master storyteller who allows us to see ourselves as we never have before.
Joseph Skibell
A Curable Romantic
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
7:00 PM
As far as romance goes, Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn is fairly incurable. Twice married, once divorced, once widowed, he flees his small village and his pious father all by the age of twelve. Young Dr. Sammelsohn is a lovelorn Candide wandering optimistically through modern history. Along the way, the amorous ghost of his wife—whom he abandoned on their wedding day—pursues and haunts him. A Curable Romantic is a novel of personal and historical exile that is often fantastical yet always grounded in tradition and history.
Joseph Skibell is the author of A Blessing on the Moon. He teaches at Emory University and is the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature.
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Amy Sedaris
Simple Times
Presented by the Literary Center at Margaret Mitchell House
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
7:00 PM
This lecture is held at the Atlanta History Center.
According to Amy Sedaris, it’s often been said that ugly people craft and attractive people have sex. In her new book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People, she sets the record straight. Demonstrating that crafting is one of life’s more pleasurable and constructive leisure activities, Sedaris shows that anyone with a couple of hours to kill and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters.
Amy Sedaris hails from North Carolina and studied and performed with Chicago’s Second City. She has appeared in film, television, and stage productions, and is the bestselling author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.
This lecture, presented by the Literary Center, is held at the Atlanta History Center. Admission is $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers. Ticket includes an autographed copy of Simple Times. Reservations are required for all lectures. For more information, visit MargaretMitchellHouse.com. To purchase tickets, please call 404.814.4150.
Jill McCorkle
Going Away Shoes
Friday, November 12, 2010
7:00 PM
Jill McCorkle’s world is populated by people whose foibles are so familiar that we want nothing so much as to watch them walk into—and then out of—life’s inevitable traps. In Going Away Shoes, she collects eleven new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight. Shoes figure largely in these stories of confronting the complications of love—honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, glass slippers—as all the characters march to a place of new awareness, and, in one way or another, transform their lives.
Jill McCorkle is the author of eight previous books, five of which have been selected as New York Times Notable Books. She teaches writing at North Caroline State University.
Fannie Flagg
I Still Dream About You
Monday, November 22, 2010
7:00 PM
Though her friends think Maggie has the perfect life, she is actually perfectly miserable. The former Miss Alabama is worried about how her life has turned out—she’s given up on her dream of living in a beautiful home, and instead is a real estate agent in Birmingham. But just when Maggie begins to wonder if there is much point in going on, her life takes a wild turn, and she finds herself catapulted into one surprising discovery after the next. As Maggie learns valuable lessons about the nature of friendship, the challenges of modern life, and the dangers of impossible dreams, she starts to see how much more there is to life than what can be listed in a Miss Alabama bio.
Fannie Flagg is a bestselling author as well as an actress, TV producer, speaker, and performer. Her book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café became a bestseller, as well as a heart-winning major motion picture.
 Anita Shreve
Rescue
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
7:00 PM
Peter Webster is a rookie paramedic when he pulls a young woman out of a car wreck that should have killed her. Sheila haunts his thoughts, and despite his misgivings, Peter is soon embroiled in an intense love affair. Nineteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone—until a phone call from Sheila alters their quiet existence, bringing long-buried questions back to the surface. A story about trespass and forgiveness, secrets and the seismic force of the truth, Rescue is a masterful portrayal of a family trying to understand its own fractured past and begin again.
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of 15 previous novels, including A Change in Altitude, Testimony, and The Pilot’s Wife, which was an Oprah Book Club selection.
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