1) GSU’s Welch School Gallery hosts Public Art for Beginners: Introducing Atlanta’s New Public Artists.
2) The Goldest plays the Earl.
3) Jack Riggs discusses and signs The Fireman’s Wife at Decatur Library’s Center for the Book.
4) The ASO performs a King Celebration concert at Morehouse College.
5) Grayson Capps plays Smith’s Olde Bar.
(Photo by Jason Parker for artrelish.com/Le Flash)
Atlanta-based novelist Jack Riggs follows up his award-winning 2004 debut When the Finch Rises with The Fireman’s Wife, an introspective tale involving a firefighter’s strained marriage in small-town South Carolina in 1970. Writer-in-Residence at Georgia Perimeter College’s Writer’s Institute, Riggs will discuss the book Thurs., Jan. 15 at the Decatur Library’s Georgia Center for the Book.
Did you do much research on firefighting for the book?
I would like to say that I rode on a fire truck for a month, but I didn’t. I starting out reading Larry Brown’s On Fire. Larry’s a friend of mine, and the book started out as a tribute to him and the type of firefighting he did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the equipment was very different than it is now. I talked to some firemen and read some true-account stories to get a sense of the language, but did most of my research online. Some of the scenes came from reconstructing my memories as a child, driving by terrible wrecks or things like that. (more…)
