Reading Web

Guest Authors Visit Athens Academy

2006-2007:
Mark Mathabane addressed Middle and Upper School students. The senior class read his Kaffir Boy in the summer.

2005-2006:
Elliot Engel visited MS and US students and delivered an evening lecture which was open to the public.

2004-2005:
Avi visited the Lower and Middle Schools, and Judith Ortiz Cofer shared her poetry and fiction with US students.

2003-2004:
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni visited with MS and US students, faculty, and parents.

Mark Mathabane
Mark Mathabane touched the hearts of millions with his sensational autobiography, Kaffir Boy. Telling the true story of his coming of age under apartheid in South Africa, the book won a prestigious Christopher Award, rose to No. 3 on The New York Times bestsellers list and to No. 1 on the Washington Post bestsellers list, and was translated into several languages. Today, the book is used in classrooms across the U.S. and is on the American Library Association's List of "Outstanding Books for the College-Bound."
Learn more about the author at his website: http://www.mathabane.com

Elliot Engel
"Professor Elliot Engel is quite possibly the most insightful, personable, and entertaining academic lecturer to come out of academia in the last fifty years. His witty, engaging speaking style imparts hard, factual information while leaving his audiences virtually spellbound punctuated by periods of laughter and flashes of insight. Every fan of literature should have these wonderful lectures as the core of their collection." Wisconsin Bookwatch
To learn more about Dr. Engel, visit his website: http://www.authorsink.com

Avi
Avi, one of today’s most popular and acclaimed authors of books for young readers, spoke with Lower School and Middle School students in February 2005. Avi recently won the Newbery Award for Crispin and received the Newbery Honor Award for Nothing but the Truth and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. His novels regularly appear on the “best books” lists of the American Library Association and Booklist. Having spoken to audiences around the country and taught children’s literature courses at several colleges, Avi has much to share with our young writers.

Judith Ortiz Cofer
Local author and University of Georgia professor Judith Ortiz Cofer is likewise an award-winning writer (with honors ranging from the 2003 Americas Award to the New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age 2004 List” to the Anisfield Wolf Book Award to the American Library Association’s Best Books of the Year list). She shared her work with Upper Schoolers in March 2005 and had lunch that day with the Library Guild volunteers. An evening reception offered faculty the opportunity to get to know the author.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Guest author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni visited Athens Academy on March 24, 2004 to speak to Middle School and Upper students, as well as teachers and parents. Winner of the 1996 American Book Award, she is the author of seven works of fiction and three poetry collections. Born in India, Divakaruni moved to the States at nineteen and later earned a doctorate in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Houston. USA Today describes Divakaruni’s “literary voice [as] a sensual bridge between worlds. India and America. Children and parents. Men and women. Passion and pragmatism.”

Her visit included Middle and Upper School assemblies and visits to individual classes. Several groups met the author in book club settings: the Library Guild during a lunch gathering, Upper School students in an after-school meeting, and faculty and parents at an evening reception. These groups discussed Divakaruni’s short stories and two of her novels, The Conch Bearer (Middle School) and Sister of My Heart, a work The San Francisco Chronicle calls “a tale as rich and bountiful as the scents and sounds of Calcutta.”