Time and Place - Using Research in Your Fiction 

Eudora Welty wrote “the art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly, and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood.” Starnes, author of the novels Fall Line and Calling, will discuss how fiction can come alive with details acquired from research, giving your short stories and novels a sense of verisimilitude. He will address his experience conducting research for a novel based in Georgia in 1955, as well as his work set in more recent times, and he will offer writers tips on avoiding the pitfalls and delays that doing research can bring to fiction writing.

Joe Samuel "Sam" Starnes was born in Alabama, grew up in Cedartown, Georgia, and has lived in New Jersey and Philadelphia since 2000. NewSouth Books published his second novel Fall Line in November 2011 and it was selected for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s list “A Year in Reading: Best of the South.” His first novel, Calling, was published by Jefferson Press in 2005. He has had journalism appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and various magazines, as well as essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals and books. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and master’s degrees from Rutgers University and Goucher College. For more info, visit www.joesamuelstarnes.com.

"Nothing says Southern like a bunch of corrupt good ol' boys sitting around a table gambling away the lives of poor people. Starnes rips the lid off dirty Georgia politics, skewers the haves and honors the have-nothings who pushed back when a manmade lake came along to drown their communities for electricity and big profits." -AJC's Best of the South 2012