Georgia Writers Museum’s Junior Board of Directors is comprised of high school students. They work together for one school year learning leadership skills and soft skills to help them in their post-high school lives. Together, each Junior Board class brainstorms and brings to fruition a class project – for students, by students. Take a look below at each classes’ remarkable work!

GWM Junior Board & their 5th grade Trail Blazer buddies are partnering are bringing to life everyone’s favorite school event… the book fair!

Book Fair LIVE & DRIVE will bring 14 children’s books to life as students host an interactive event for nearly 100 primary school students to enjoy.

Primary school students and their teachers will interact with story characters, hear readings, and watch performances from select authors, purchase books, and even get the chance to win a special raffle at the book fair.

Junior Board student organizers are lookin for “Book Angels” to donate $20 to ensure that all primary school visitors will leave the event with a brand-new signed book of their own!

Live & Drive Book Fair Student Picks

Donate online, or reach out to order a copy for your student.

When you order through the Georgia Writers Museum 40% of your book purchase supports our local non-profit.

To order, email: info@georgiawritersmueum.org or call 706-991-5119.

Class of ’22

Class Project

The 2021-23 GWM Junior Board invited authors Tina McElroy Ansa and Wanda Lloyd to speak about their co-edited book Meeting at the Table: African-American Women Write on Race, Culture, and Community. The Junior Board created lesson plans based on Ansa and Lloyd’s book and taught chapters in peer classrooms. They then hosted the ladies for a Meet the Author, inviting more than 100 students to hear the co-editors speak about their experiences editing the book.

About the Book

In the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the worldwide protests that followed in 2020, the co-editors of Meeting at the Table editors created a project that would bring voices of African-American women together to honestly and transparently share how race and culture affected them in ways related to their families, their careers and their communities. The essays in Meeting at the Table will not only enlighten readers, but offer paths into the vital conversations across racial, cultural and community divides. Co-editors Tina McElroy Ansa and Wanda Lloyd, friends for more than 50 years and also colleagues as journalists and authors, believe the 15 essays will inspire readers from diverse ages and backgrounds to create their own tables of conversations about race.

About the Editors

Tina McElroy Ansa is the author of five award-winning novels, including Baby of the Family, The Hand I Fan With, Ugly Ways and You Know Better. In 2004, she founded the Sea Island Writers Retreat in her home state of Georgia and has taken the Retreats on the road around the country. In 2007, she founded the independent publishing company DownSouth Press, which published her fifth novel, Taking After Mudear. Ansa received the Bebe Moore Campbell Memorial Award from the National Book Club Conference. She has been awarded the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for her body of work, and for contributions to the literary arts community of Georgia. She was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University. She has also contributed “Essays From Georgia” to CBS Sunday Morning. In 2011, Ansa was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts from her alma mater Spelman College. The writer is at work on her sixth novel,  and she is writing her first work of nonfiction. She writes on her home of St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Wanda Lloyd is author of Coming Full Circle: From Jim Crow to Journalism, a memoir published in 2020 by NewSouth Books. A retired newspaper editor with experience at seven daily newspapers, including The Washington Post and USA Today, Lloyd grew up in Savannah, Georgia. She retired from daily journalism in 2013 as executive editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, and then returned to Savannah to accept the position of chair and associate professor of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Savannah State University. She was the founding executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University, a program to train non-traditional students for professional newsroom careers. She was a fellow of the Management Training Center at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Business. In 2019 Lloyd was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. She earned a BA degree in English at Spelman College, on whose Board of Trustees she served for almost 20 years. In 2016, Spelman awarded her the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

Event Photos

Hear what Tina & Wanda had to say about the Junior Board after their visit, on their podcast 2 Old Chicks Who Know a Lot of Sh*t!