By Susanne Reynolds

Special to The Post-Searchlight

The Carter Arts and Lecture Series Committee is pleased to invite the community to a special evening with southern women authors, Bailey White, Diane Roberts, and Lu Vickers on Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m., in the Charles H. Kirbo Regional Center auditorium.

The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required for entry. Doors will open to the public at 6 p.m.

Bailey White of Thomasville is an American author and a regular radio commentator for the Nation Public Radio (NPR) program, All Things Considered. In 1973, she graduated from Florida State University and then moved to California. Eleven years later, White returned to Georgia where she taught for more than 20 years.

A friend convinced her to submit commentaries to NPR. Her gravelly voice and gift for portraying the unusual personalities of people in the rural south with gentle wit proved very popular with her NPR audience. White has published four books: Mama Makes Up Her Mind; Sleeping at the Starlite Motel; Quite a Year for Plums; and Nothing with Strings.

Dianne Roberts of Florida has been a commentator for NPR since 1993, a political columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, a journalist for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Orlando Sentinel.

Roberts is professor of literature and writing at Florida State University and a visiting fellow in creative writing at the University of Northumbria in England, specializing in Southern United States culture

Her books include: Dream State: Eight Generations of Swamp Lawyers, Conquistadors, Confederate Daughters, Banana Republicans, and other Florida Wildlife; Faulkner and Southern Womanhood, and The Myth of Aunt Jemima.

Lu Vickers of Chattahoochee (Fla.) will be joining White and Roberts for the Southern Women Authors Panel on Thursday.

Vickers has received three Individual Artist’s Grants for fiction from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. In addition to the novel, Breathing Underwater, she has published books on Florida history: Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida’s Oldest Roadside Attractions and Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland. 

In 2012, with former mermaid Bonnie Georgiadis, Vickers put together a collection of vintage photos, Weeki Wachee Mermaids: Thirty Years of Underwater Photography. Other works include a history of Paradise Park, a segregated park owned from 1949 to 1969 by Silver Springs in Ocala, Florida; and the novel, The Natural History of a Mermaid.

Join the ABAC at Bainbridge community for an authors’ panel lead by Bailey White, Diane Roberts, and Lu Vickers on Thursday, April 12, beginning at 7 p.m., in the Charles H. Kirbo Regional Center auditorium.

For more information, please visit www.bainbridge.edu.