Terry McMillan is a pretty big deal.
The bestselling author is perhaps best known for her romantic dramas that have been adapted to film: How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale starred the likes of Whoopi Goldberg (the former), Whitney Houston (the latter), and Angela Bassett (both), and earned some $120 million at the box office. Waiting to Exhale alone spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold 4 million copies. Who Asked You?, the author’s eighth novel, is due on shelves in September
But first, she’s going to be in Austin this weekend.
The Austin African American Book Festival booked McMillan to speak and sign copies of her books at its Eastside celebration of black writers and their work. She joins Michael Collins, an English professor at Texas A&M University who wrote Understanding Etheridge Knight (the poetry of whom Zell Miller III will perform), and Anita Richmond Bunkley, who’s published some 10 novels in the last 20 years including A Thousand Steps, which hit bookstores in February.
It’s an all-star lineup for the fest, which bills itself as “an intergenerational event to promote literature, reading, writing and library usage within the African American community.” But by no means is it just for one segment of the Austin community; indeed, this year’s theme, I Am All of Them, They Are All of Me: The Brilliance and Resiliency of Black Letters is applicable to readers of all shapes, sizes, and colors.
The seventh annual Austin African American Book Fest is Saturday, June 22, at the Carver Museum and Cultural Center (1165 Angelina), and the event is free and open to the public. Visit www.aabookfest.com for complete details.
This article appears in June 21 • 2013.