Free & Open to the Public!
DOWNTOWN DECATUR, GA FRI, OCT 2
Keynote, 7 PM
SAT, OCT 3
Festival, 10 AM – 5 PM decaturbookfestival.com
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Decatur Book Festival returns Oct. 2-3 • Katherine Applegate and Gennifer Choldenko, I Am a Good Dog: A Dogtown Book, as DBF’s “Kidnote.”
• Pedro Martín, Mexikid Dreams: A Graphic Memoir
• Tomi Adeyemi, The Siren
• Lynn Painter, Trust Fall
• Marcia Chatelain, How Bright The Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington • Ryan Douglass, Night of Madness • Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made
Philip B. Williams
The Decatur Book Festival (DBF) has unveiled the full lineup for its 21st annual festival, taking place Oct. 2–3 in downtown Decatur. Free and open to all, the festival takes place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in various locations, including the new Decatur Square Stage. This year’s lineup includes authors working in literary fiction, picture books, romance and romantasy, nonfiction, science fiction, poetry, horror, memoir, chapter books and graphic novels for young readers, young adult, and many more. Pulitzer Winner Brian Goldstone (There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America) will open the festival on Friday evening at 7 p.m. for the keynote session, in conversation with Brea Baker. The session is free, although advanced registration is encouraged. The remaining sessions will run Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., including:
• Celeste Headlee, Freedom’s Daughter’s: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education • Silas House, The Tulip Poplars • Meherwan Irani, No. 1 Best Indian Cookbook in the World: At-Home Recipes from the Streets, Truck Stops, Villages, and Palaces of India • Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” Johnson, What (TF) Do I Do Now?: Reclaiming Myself, One Piece at a Time •
Tayari Jones, Kin
• Patricia Lockwood, Agate Head / Stone Soup • Madeline Martin, A Time of Witches
• J.Tom Morgan, A Rainy Night in Georgia • Steven Raichlen, Man on Fire: Of Life, Love, Literature, and Really Good Barbecue • Chelsea Rathburn, Broken Houses: Poems • Roopika Risam, Data Empire: The Power of Information to Organize, Control, and Dominate • Eliot Schrefer, Fatal Glitch: Let’s Play a Game • Arthur Sze, Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry • Aiden Thomas, Cemetery Boys: Espíritu • Colleen AF Venable and Honie Beam, Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying: The Graphic Novel • Nghi Vo, The Scarlet Ball • Michelle A. Williams, The Cure for Everything: The Epic Struggle for Public Health and a Radical Vision for Human Thriving On Saturday, downtown Decatur will transform into a lively street fair featuring more than 125 exhibitors: authors, poets,
Gennifer Choldenko
festival include an audiobook walk, a celebration of the Lillian Smith Book Awards, a meeting of the Silent Book Club, and more. The Emerging Student Writers at the Decatur Library will showcase readings by students from the following universities: • Agnes Scott College • Emory University • Georgia College and State University • Georgia State University • Mercer University • Morehouse College • SCAD Atlanta • Spelman College • University of Georgia The full author lineup is available at decaturbookfestival.com.
Tayari Jones
publishers, booksellers, artists, and local businesses and nonprofit organizations, alongside food trucks and Decatur buskers. Family-friendly programming for DBF’s youngest attendees (ages 0 – 5) includes storytimes and performances with Alliance Theatre, Atlanta History Center, and Music Together of Decatur. Other events happening during the
Nghi Vo
Katherine Applegate THEGAVOICE.COM
SEPTEMBER 2026
| 15
A Q&A with DBF keynote speaker Brian Goldstone By Collin Kelley Brian Goldstone has spent much of his career examining the lives of people too often overlooked in America’s economic and political narratives. His Pulitzer Prize-winning “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” offers an intimate portrait of five Atlanta families struggling to survive despite holding down – sometimes multiple – jobs. In this Q&A, Goldstone discusses the hard-to-grasp idea of having a job, but not having a home, how the research and writing of his book changed his view of Atlanta, and what the solutions are to this everwidening crisis.
Inman Park Dry Cleaners Back under original ownership/management for improved, personalized service.
Bring this ad in for a 10% discount! We look forward to serving you again!
-Thomas & Jennie
910 Austin Ave., Atlanta 30307 (404) 584-5883
7 am - 6 pm Monday - Friday 8 am - 5 pm Saturday Closed Sunday 16 | SEPTEMBER 2026
I drive by those extended-stay motels on Candler Road and down near the airport where people have been pushed to the margins. Most people don’t realize these places are functioning as for-profit homeless shelters. It’s like a balloon squeezed at one end: as one area of the city sees all this infusion of new capital, the people once there are forced to other parts of the city. If you could change one policy or assumption about housing in Atlanta, what would you change first?
We talk so much about the need for affordable housing, but affordable for whom? It just can’t be affordable; it has to be safe and dignified. You can find Brian Goldstone a less expensive apartment, Your book makes the but those places are also distinction between homelessness as dangerous and falling apart – afflicted we traditionally imagine it — people with mold, rodents, and neglect. The living on the street or in shelters — working homeless are making this city’s and the “working homeless,” people success possible through their work and who have jobs but still can’t afford a labor, but where are they going to live? We place to live. Why do you think that need a massive public investment in truly distinction has been so difficult for affordable and dignified housing. That Americans and lawmakers to grasp? will require a paradigm shift in how we I was stunned to find how prevalent think about housing. It’s got to be more this phenomenon is: people who are than a house; it’s got to be more than working more than one job, and it’s still accumulating wealth or part of a portfolio not enough to secure stable housing or a to grow. Not while people are deciding if roof over one’s head. We as a society have they can pay rent that month or afford to insulated ourselves from asking difficult eat, or their kid’s medication or their own questions about the economy, structures, insulin. the housing system, and what work looks Has anything happened in Atlanta like in this country. We’ve accepted this since you finished the book that has narrative of broken people instead of made you more hopeful — or more broken policies. By putting the onus on pessimistic — about the possibility of those who are suffering this deprivation, solving this crisis? we avoid having direct scrutiny. There’s a self-protective dynamic at work. It just At the federal level, we are far becomes easier and less messy to assign from ending the crisis. The current blame to the victims. administration is dumping gasoline on it by cutting safety nets like food stamps How did your familiarity with Atlanta and Medicaid and making life for people — and your understanding of the city’s with disabilities more precarious. On the neighborhoods, history and culture — other hand, talking about the book with shape the way you reported the book? churches, community groups, tenant And did reporting the book change the groups, and unions – it’s an incredible way you see Atlanta? reminder that what is happening in It irrevocably altered my perception of Washington, D.C. is not the final word the city. It ruined Atlanta for me in many on our housing future. Some people have ways. All these resources and amenities, become radicalized in a way, refusing the like green spaces, the Beltline, breweries, old ways and options that we’ve been eateries – it made it impossible to enjoy given around housing. They’re refusing the those without an awareness of the toll this status quo, demanding a different political revitalized Atlanta has taken on workingand moral imagination. That really does class families. In the course of Atlanta give me hope. It’s heartening to talk to becoming this transformed city, it’s pushed people who have taken their anger from many people out of neighborhoods and reading the book and seeing what these housing altogether. I’m thinking of people families were subjected to, and galvanizing who grew up or lived in Old Fourth Ward, them to demand a different kind of city Reynoldstown, Kirkwood, and are now and housing policy. unable to enjoy the fruits of the success. THEGAVOICE.COM
Oct. 2–3 | Downtown Decatur, GA
T H A N K YO U T O O U R 2 0 2 6 S P O N S O R S & PA R T N E R S !
Agnes Scott College
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Chicory Wealth
Delta Community Credit Union
The Task Force for Global Health
Georgia’s Own Credit Union
SouthState Bank
Woodward Academy
Fri, Oct 2: Keynote, 7 PM | Sat, Oct 3: Festival, 10 AM – 5 PM | decaturbookfestival.com