Most of the time, the ArtScape column focuses on visual art and arts exhibitions, but this time around, I’m focusing on literary artists.
Several authors have sent in info on their latest books, so I’m using this space to highlight them.
In Tarika Holland’s second book, “Becoming the Artist: Volume One,” she shares “her game and gems she’s gathered over her first ten years of pursuing art.”
It launches Aug. 16.
Holland is a dancer, actor, spoken word artist and poet. A 2019 graduate of John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School, where she took part in shows such as “Footloose! The Musical,” “A Wrinkle In Time” and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” she was the narrator and dancer in the 2023 debut of an original stage play, “Our Love Story,” based on an Augusta couple and their 75-year marriage, according to her website.
She published her first book, “Through the Eyes of Is0lated Beauty” in November 2020.
“’Becoming the Artist’ is more than a book series. It is an immersive and educational program or performing artists, created by a performing artist. This volume is for those who are at the start of their artistic journey, for those who have been at it for a while and need a pick-me-up, and it is even for the parents of an artist to understand their child’s world. It focuses on building confidence, creating a vision, navigating and networking, professionalism, as well as tools that can be used during the creative process, eventually leading the artist to sharing their work with an audience. ‘Becoming the Artist’ teaches you that there’s so much more than the lights, cameras, glitz, and glam,” according to a news release.
Another author with a second book is John “Stoney” Cannon, who is following up with “Hooked Onna Feelin” about popular musicians with “Sorry We Missed Your Call: Glam Rock” the first in a “multiple edition collection spotlighting some of pop culture’s biggest misses,” according to a news release.
Cannon combines nearly 50 years of music, radio, television and journalism experience “as well as a record collection that could pass as a small record store” into this endeavor.
“Sorry We Missed Your Call: Glam Rock” was released on June 28 and “takes decades of underrated records by early glam rockers like Sweet and Angel, hair metal bangers such as Sweet Pain and London, as well as late sleaze bands like Electric Boys and Backyard Babies and rolls them all into an informative read filled with over eighty titles from 1970 right up until 2024,” the release continued.
The next book in the series “Rock+Roll Horror Show” releases on Friday, Sept. 13.
“The second edition explores one of horror cinema’s craziest offshoots – Rock+Roll Horror Show – a bloody blend kicking off in the early 1970s and turning into low-budget madness in the 1980s,” according to Cannon’s website.
Eva Creel’s book “The Gobblers” will be released in English this fall.
According to Creel, the book, published by Clavis Publishing, has already been released in Dutch.
“A Gobbler is a monster who lives in a hole. It feasts on hate and anger and when it sees two brothers fighting, it begins to grow and grow and grow,” she wrote in the email. “’The Gobblers,’ an important reminder, even on the smoothest roads, potholes happen. Let each pothole be a stroke of inspiration on the canvas of life. But whatever you do, don’t feed the gobbler.”
And Baillie Conway recently illustrated Christopher Tremblay’s book “Walt’s Dreaming Tree,” which is about The Dreaming Tree in Marceline, Missouri, where Walt Disney spent a lot of time as a child.
Conway has included a few hidden Mickeys in the illustrations.
It’s available on Amazon.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years and is a Georgia Press Association award winner. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Thanks very Munch and Crunch for including The Gobblers in your post.