Authors Hopson, King and Schutt to present at History Book Festival
The eighth annual History Book Festival is set for Friday to Sunday, Sept. 27 to 29, in Lewes. Live events will feature 23 distinguished authors of historical nonfiction and fiction including Carole Hopson, Michelle T. King and Bill Schutt. All three authors will conduct free presentations of their books Saturday, Sept. 28.
Hopson will present her novel “A Pair of Wings,” which was inspired by Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air. In 1920, no one in the U.S. would teach a Black woman to fly, so Bessie learned to speak French and set off for Europe. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, she earned her pilot’s license. Hopson herself is a Boeing 737 captain for United Airlines, and she founded the Jet Black Foundation, an organization dedicated to sending 100 Black women to flight school by 2035.
The festival has partnered with the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice for Hopson’s event. “We are delighted to bring Black authors and their work to the attention of our community,” said Clara Licata, SDARJ chair. “We are all interested in their research, imagination and how they tell their stories.”
King will present “Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.” King’s book explores the life of Taiwanese cookbook author and television personality Fu Pei-mei in addition to King’s own family stories and contemporary oral history. The book allows readers to understand Chinese food as both an inheritance of tradition and a truly modern creation. King said, “Writing this book, to me, has been an act of joy, a celebration of my parents' mid-century Chinese immigration story, an experience shared by so many others but not often articulated due to language and cultural barriers. With this book, I am celebrating the unsung everyday domestic labor of so many women around the world who put dinner on the table for their families,
day after day.” King is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she specializes in modern Chinese gender and food history.
The festival has partnered with the Historic Lewes Farmers Market to present an additional event with King at 10 a.m., at George H.P. Smith Park, where King will appear with a chef from Bodhi Kitchen in Rehoboth. Together they will help illustrate some of the ways that home cooks can integrate the wonderful, fresh Asian ingredients available through local farms into their everyday meals.
Schutt will present his book, “Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans.” Schutt is a vertebrate zoologist, an author of six books and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Schutt said, “I hope [readers] come away from my presentation entertained, amused, and having learned something surprising about the natural history of teeth. An example would be, ‘Where did teeth come from and what were they doing before they were teeth?’ I’m also planning on dropping in a few stories about early dental practices, ancient mouth bling, and the strange, worldwide belief in tooth worms. And let’s not forget the Tooth Fairy!”
Books can be purchased at each venue, or they may be bought in advance at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, the official bookseller of the History Book Festival, or at Biblion in Lewes. Authors will be available to personalize books after their presentations.
For more information on all presenting authors and their featured books, go to historybookfestival.org.
The History Book Festival is presented by Delaware Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Lee Ann Wilkinson Group, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty. Special thanks go to HBF’s Founding Program Partners for their continuing support: the Lewes Public Library for event promotion and production, and Browseabout Books.
