Of Writing and Rivers

Authors of Fiction and Nonfiction About Georgia Waterways to Speak at Kennesaw State on Feb. 20

Kennesaw, Ga. – Joe Samuel Starnes, author of the novel Fall Line, and Joe Cook, advocacy and communication coordinator for the Coosa River Basin Initiative and author of several nonfiction books about Georgia rivers, will talk about their work and the state of local waterways at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20, at Kennesaw State University.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in room 1021 of Kennesaw State’s Social Sciences building. The university is at 1000 Chastain Road, Kennesaw, 30144.

Starnes's novel Fall Line, published by NewSouth Books, was selected to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Best of the South" list for 2012. Of the novel that takes place on one day in 1955, reviewer Gina Webb wrote, "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."

Cook is author of the Etowah River User's Guide, published in 2013 by the University of Georgia Press. His next book, A Chattahoochee River User's Guide, will be released in the summer. He is a nature/landscape photographer and writer whose work has been published in numerous magazines and is featured in three books, including River Song: A Journey Down the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers. 

Starnes grew up in Cedartown, Georgia, and has lived in New Jersey and Philadelphia since 2000. His first novel, Calling, was published in 2005, and will be republished as an eBook this year by Otto Penzler's Mysterious Press. He has had journalism appear in the New York Times, Washington Post and various magazines, as well as essays, short stories, and poems in books and literary journals. He holds an bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, an MA in English from Rutgers University in Newark, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.

Cook has worked at CRBI since 2005 and has studied and reported extensively on water resource issues in Georgia since 1994. He and his daughter and her mother spent 26 days canoeing the 160-mile length of the Etowah River in 2002. In 2007, he was the recipient of a national River Hero award from River Network and in 2011 was named to Georgia Trend's 100 Most Influential Georgians list. He is a 1988 graduate of Berry College where he studied communications and agriculture. A native of Atlanta, he lives in Rome, Ga.