Who is the Norman Mailer of our time? According to Lev Grossman — book critic at TIME and an accomplished novelist in his own right — it’s Jonathan Franzen, the keynote author at this year’s AJC Decatur Book Festival. During an interview on Charlie Rose, promoting Grossman’s new novel The Magicians, Rose asked Grossman to name the Normal Mailer, the “great literary figure” of our time. Grossman said, “no other name seems suitable to me than Jonathan Franzen.” Grossman said of Franzen’s forthcoming novel Freedom, “this is a towering book, a big book. It is one of the books that will endure.”

Here at the AJC DBF, we’ve been passing around our few advance copies of Freedom, and we wholeheartedly agree. Make sure to come out and see him on Friday, September 3. (Stay tuned for details on tickets to the event.)

A transcript of the entire interview is available here. The comment on Franzen comes near the end of the interview.

Look! It’s a dragon! It’s a dinosaur!

No, it’s a….

Wait a minute. What the heck is it?

It’s the new AJC Decatur Book Festival monster, and it doesn’t have a name.

You can be the one to name it! Propose the best name for the monster and win VIP access to the AJC DBF, September 3-5, and an iPad!

Name submissions are due July 18, so you’d better start brainstorming! Voting on the top five names runs from July 26 to August 1, and the winner and the monster’s name will be announced August 14 at the Roseanne Cash book signing at Agnes Scott College’s Presser Hall. Come on, everyone deserves a name—especially monsters! Name ours at Access Atlanta.

There’s been some excitement in the Decatur blogosphere about a certain famous writer person who will be visiting in the next couple of weeks. Some may remember earlier this year when we were on the verge of selling off our grandmothers just so we could get this certain famous writer person to come to the Decatur Book Festival.

Who knew all we had to do was let the brilliant folks at Little Shop of Stories handle it? Head on over to their blog so that they can tell you just how they did it.

This certain famous writer person will be here Monday December 14th at 6pm. Mark your calendars now!

UPDATE (11/24): Event details have now been posted on the Little Shop blog.

Novelist Kaylie Jones describes herself as “[a] mom, [an] MFA prof, [and a] TKD blackbelt,” but if the starred review her new memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me received from Publisher’s Weekly has anything to say about that she will most likely be adding best-selling author to that list very soon.

In Lies, which the PW review lauds as “a story of struggle and triumph that is a joy to read,” Kaylie addresses the tumultuous relationship she had with her alcoholic mother; the grief she experienced after the death of her famous father, author James Jones (From Here To Eternity; The Thin Red Line); as well her own private battle with alcoholism.

Kaylie explores some of the memoir’s major themes in her earlier work, most notably in the semi-autobiographical novel,  A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries which was made into a feature film starring Kris Kristofferson and Leelee Sobieski. I haven’t read this particular book, nor seen the film so I might check those out while I wait for the memoir’s release on September 25th.

Anyway, the reason we’re so excited about this is because Kaylie will be here for the 2009 Decatur Book  Festival!  On September 4 she will be delivering the keynote address for the Writers Conference @ DBF in addition to leading a workshop, open to local writers and readers, on structuring the memoir. Kaylie will then be joined by fellow memoirist Jessica Handler (Invisible Sisters: A Memoir) at 4:15 p.m. on September 5 for a reading in the Decatur Conference Center. So mark your calendars!

Read the entire review here (it’s the first starred entry).

Shalonda really is an independent blogger, and we had nothing to do with producing her vlog entry about this year’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical. (You can tell because she didn’t give that long form of the name!) But I don’t think I could have said it better myself. Thanks Shalonda!

Hello! My name is Jennifer and I am an intern to the fine folks that run the Decatur Book Festival. So far my main duties as a Decatur Book Festival  intern  have been to collect and organize information about the 140+ authors participating in the festival, and then enter all of said information into an online database. But today all of that changed when Tom bellowed (a la Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments) that I begin blogging. “Go, and let your voice be heard through that series of tubes,” he said.

And so here I am. Thank you for reading this far.

Now, whenever Tom finds it in his heart to forgive me for the above character assasination I’ll be back–updating the blog with everything DBF related (and sometimes not.) I hope you’re all as excited for September 4th as I am!

Have you read the story of the Fugees in Warren St. John’s book, Outcasts United? They’re a soccer team in Clarkston, just east of Decatur, but they’re so much more. All the members of the team are war refugees resettled in Clarkston. And the soccer team is more than a soccer team… it’s their family, their education, their lifeline in an unfamiliar world.

There’s much more to the story, but I bring it up right now because the Fugees need bicycles. They’ll be riding from Clarkston to Decatur every morning this summer to attend summer enrichment classes, and riding back at the end of each day to go to soccer practice. They’ve had about 30 bikes donated, but they need many more.

Do you have a bike in good condition that you’d like to donate? Or would you like to volunteer to fix up the bikes they have? Do you own a bike shop and maybe would like to donate some tires and inner tubes? See below for details from the Fugees on how to help…

Please call (404-771-0197) or email (diana@fugeesfamily.org) if you have any questions or have bikes that can be donated.

Bikes can be brought by our office which is located at  3519 West Hill St. next to the leasing office in the Clarkston Townhomes. We can arrange for a pick-up if needed.

Please call before bringing bikes by so that someone will be at the office.

Every now and then, Atlanta author Patti Callahan Henry will get in touch with me and arrange to come down to Decatur for drinks and conversation… which really means we’ll be cracking jokes and laughing until our jaws are sore. Alas, you have not yourself likely had the opportunity to party with Patti. So the Decatur Book Festival is going to give you that chance.

Patti’s latest novel, “Driftwood Summer,” is launching this Monday, June 1. She’ll start off the evening at 7:15 p.m., giving a talk and reading, followed by a signing, at the Decatur Library (215 Sycamore Street), an event put on by the superb folks at the Georgia Center for the Book. Patti gives hilarious talks, so you won’t want to miss this.

After you get your book signed, there’s no need for the night to end. Walk about three blocks to The Artisan (201 West Ponce de Leon Avenue), where the Decatur Book Festival will throw a party for Patti at the poolside patio, on the rooftop, starting at 9:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and Patti will have some giveaways. But most importantly, Patti will be there, so I promise you’ll have a really good time and wear out all your laughing muscles. Hope to see you at both events!

There’s a nice write-up in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the ongoing restoration of The Wren’s Nest, the museum home of Joel Chandler Harris. Under the inspired leadership of executive director Lain Shakespeare, Harris’ great-great-great-grandson, two decades’ worth of delayed maintenance and restoration is being tackled in one fell swoop. Shakespeare and his staff have also greatly expanded the home’s educational mission. In addition to regular storytelling by master storytellers, the organization is reaching out to neighborhood schools, offering writing enrichment opportunities, outreach that Harris — a strong proponent for children’s literacy — would surely have applauded.

The Wren’s Nest is also gearing up for the third summer of The Wren’s Nest Publishing Co., a summer editing and publishing camp for high schoolers, put on in partnership with the Decatur Book Festival. The teenagers will produce their own literary magazine and launch it at this year’s Decatur Book Festival.

I travel to New York a couple times a year — and usually to one or two other big book events elsewhere in the country — to spread the word about the literary nirvana we have emerging here in Decatur. One of the examples I often return to is Paste Magazine, the award-winning, nationally renowned, music and culture magazine based right here in Decatur. The good folks at Paste have often partnered with the Decatur Book Festival to put on literary programs with a musical bent. They’ve twice hosted the high school publishers and editors of The Wren’s Nest Publishing Company. And on top of all that, the Decatur Book Festival’s first offices were sublet from Paste. In short, they’ve been a big part of what makes Decatur a great place to be.

Now they need our help. The hard economic times have hit them too, and, despite a 20% across the board pay cut, they’re scrambling to scrape together enough money to publish their next issue. They’re not asking you to give something for nothing. Make a donation, and you’ll get access to some exclusive downloadable tracks from folks like The Decembrists, the Indigo Girls, and the Cowboy Junkies. You’ll also get entered in a drawing for bigger prizes.

This is a great publication put out by exceptional people who are dedicated to the Decatur community. Let’s help them make it through this hard time so they’ll still be doing all they do so well when the economy turns around.