The Reading Diva

List of mentioned books: Come Sunday Morning Love, Honor and Betray My Long Trip Home Secret Obsession Sellout Silver Sparrow The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

They call Spartanburg the Sparkle City. Sapphire brought some of it there on Thursday (December 8). The author, best known for her book Push , visited the Spartanburg County Public Library's Headquarters location December 8 as a part of library's Fall Into Reading Series. Sapphire also talked about her latest book, The Kid , which follows the life of Precious Jones' son, Abdul. The first part of the event was a discussion with WSPA's Amy Wood (thanks for the shout-out, Amy!). Sapphire said that she wanted to highlight child abuse in both of her books and used the Penn State and Syracuse as current examples. "A book has a long life," she said. "There were people f ifteen years ago who couldn't read Push . Now it has a common place. There are generations and generations that go through it (child abuse) and they don't deal with it because we don't rip it open and look at it." Sapphire talking to Amy Wood As man...

Sapphire, author of the best-selling novel Push , will be at the Spartanburg County Public Library on Thursday, December 8. This event will be a part of the library's first Fall For Reading series, where readings will have coffee and conversations with the author. Sapphire will not only be promoting Push (which was the basis of the movie Precious ), but her new novel The Kid , which follows the life of Precious' son, Abdul. Yours truly will be making the three-hour drive up I-26 to Spartanburg to attend this event. I will be posting and writing about the experience next week.

Ten years ago, I started on my journey on becoming a newspaper reporter. With a brand new college degree in Print Journalism, I went out to work for a newspaper in Upstate South Carolina. If you know my full name, Google it and you may find a few of my articles still out there from that time. Let's just say my career in newspapers lasted shorter than the time it took for me to get that degree. It took me a long time to get the courage to write again. One of the reasons I started this blog was to get my writing mojo back. So when a new magazine started in my area, I decided to take a chance and start writing for a publication again. A year and some bumps in the road later, I finally got to see my byline in Living Roots Magazine yesterday! In every issue, which is bimonthly, I will be writing about books (duh!). I will be writing about authors, book events in South Carolina (including an event I will be traveling to Spartanburg for next week) and book reviews. My first story featu...

Author Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts visited the College of Charleston's Avery Research Center November 10 to discuss her book, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. This was Rhodes-Pitts' second stop while visiting Charleston. She spoke to the Charleston Library Society earlier in the day as a part of their Wide Angle Lunches series. After reading a section from her book, Rhodes-Pitts took questions from the audience. She said that book is not necessary a memoir, but a book in which the residents of Harlem discuss and encounter the past. She found out while living there that she enjoyed the stories of the residents. "When I got there and talked to the elders and looking at pictures, I got an obsession with the past," Rhodes-Pitts said. "I wanted to know the back story of the story." Rhodes-Pitts, a Harvard grad and Fullbright scholar, is currently living in New Orleans but will be leaving for Haiti soon. She will be writing a book...