Acclaimed Georgia author Amy Blackmarr will read and sign her books and a newly released CD audio-book during "An Evening With Amy Blackmarr" at the Newnan-Coweta Public Library on Tuesday, September 25, beginning at 7:00 pm. The reading and book signing will follow a reception at 6:30 pm.

Described by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a writer with "a self-deprecating wit and an uncommon grace," Amy Blackmarr became a familiar public radio voice when she left her paralegal business in Kansas to move into her grandfather's fishing shack beside a south-Georgia pond and turned to writing full time.

Her collections of personal essays -- Going to Ground, House of Steps and Above the Fall Line -- relate wrenching tales of her experiences with the natural world while living in rustic hideouts tucked far back in the woods.

Going to Ground, set in Irwin County, was named in 2005 to the Georgia Center for the Book's list of the "Top 25 Books All Georgians Should Read." A new CD-audio edition, narrated by Blackmarr, was released this month, marking the book's tenth year in print. Asked why she thought the book had remained so popular, she said she thought it spoke "to our common longing to feel grounded in home territory, to know where we belong."

House of Steps tells of the author's four years in a gawky "hippie house" in rural Kansas, interweaving memories of her Georgia upbringing.

Above the Fall Line, set in a tiny mountain cabin in North Georgia, garnered Blackmarr a 2004 Georgia Author of the Year award.

Her tales of ghostly experiences in Dahlonega, Georgia, Dahlonega Haunts, has also become a favorite. She wrote the book "on a lark," she says, while leading a psychic around local haunted buildings in the old gold-mining town. "The psychic talked to the ghosts, and I wrote down what he said they said," she says, laughing. "Scary fun!"

Blackmarr holds a Ph.D. in English and has been speaking for ten years about the relationship between the natural world and the creative life. She can be reached at www.amyblackmarr.com.

The reserved-seating event is sponsored by the Newnan-Coweta Public Library, located at 25 Hospital Road in Newnan. For reservations, contact the Public Services Librarian at 770-253-3625 ext. 213. Visit the Newnan-Coweta Public Library online at www.newnan-coweta.org

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