At the 19th Annual Bookmarks Festival, authors Stacey Abrams and Zaila Avant-garde speak on the ‘power of words’

Featured photo: (From left to right) Zaila Avant-garde, Stacey Abrams and Dr. Laura Gerald. (Photo by Gale Melcher)

The sun shone down on the dozens of excited faces that woke up bright and early on Sept. 28 to line up outside First Baptist on Fifth in downtown Winston-Salem. Readers filled the sanctuary, spilling into balcony seats, eager to hear from two highly anticipated guests with the 19^th annual Bookmarks Festival: Stacey Abrams and Zaila Avant-garde.

Warm applause welcomed the two onstage where they chatted about their recent books in a conversation with Dr. Laura Gerald, a pediatrician and president of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust.

One thing Abrams and Avant-garde have in common? They do a lot.

In addition to being the author of more than a dozen books, Abrams is a lawyer and seasoned politician with a career in Georgia’s House of Representatives that spanned a decade, from 2007-17. She took on the role as the House minority leader from 2011-17 before running for governor in 2018 and 2022. Avant-garde, winner of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee at just 14 years old, has also written several books. She’s a baller — both on and off the court. Yeah, she holds three Guinness World Records in basketball. Keeping all those balls in the air isn’t easy, but she still makes time for juggling, too, taking home silver at the International Jugglers’ Association 2020 championship in the Juniors Division.

While at different stages in their lives, Abrams, 50, and Avante-Garde, 17, both share a love of reading that resides deep within their childhood memories.

Abrams practically grew up in a library. Her mother was a librarian, and she remembers sleeping in the stacks. She was also inspired by her father, who has dyslexia and loved reading in spite of how difficult it was for him, Abrams recounted. For her father, the “joy of reading” overpowered the “struggle of reading.”

Avante-garde was poring over words before she could read them, becoming “reading obsessed” as a child. She’s seen and spelled a lot of words — learning about 12,000 words per day to prepare for the bee. Now she’s putting them on the page. Avant-garde hopes to help young readers “feel inspired to want to read more” with her new book, “Words Are Magic,” which is targeted toward young children learning how to read.

As neither comes from a publishing background, they touched on the difficulties of breaking into the industry. Avant-garde noted the multiple rounds of editing that books often have to go through. Abrams’ own family was integral to her editing process, enlisting her siblings’ children for feedback on the books. 

“Little kids can be brutal,” joked Abrams. She’s written across multiple genres, from romance novels to thrillers, but crossing those bridges wasn’t easy, she said. But it’s also been worth it. 

“I have been honored to write in different genres, but being able to write a children’s book is, for me, the highest honor,” Abrams said. “Kids are smart, and you can give them multiple messages as long as they weave together.”

Abrams has written multiple children’s books; her latest is called “Stacey Speaks Up.” The story is about school lunches — and what happens when kids can’t afford them.

“I wanted to tell a story that grapples with the fact that one in five children in our nation are hungry,” Abrams explained. “Our school systems are fulcrums for who we intend to be, and it’s a place where we ask adults to tell children they can’t eat.”

In the story, Stacey sees a student who can’t afford lunch being told to put his tray back. 

“She doesn’t know what to do,” Abrams said. She said this story is about “confronting how you feel when you feel powerless, confronting how you feel when you feel embarrassed that you didn’t do more.” Her book aims to “help children channel those emotions into actions.”

“Empathy is how we feel, advocacy is what we do about it,” she said. When those two things come together, “magic happens.” 

Abrams explained that she loves being able to tell a wholesome story that “meets the child” where they are. “Not truncate them, but condense them.That, to me, is a testament to good writing,” she added.

She emphasized that really honing in on the essence of a story is even more important when writing for younger audiences.

“My writing process is to find the theme, the value and the story, and refine it as much as possible so I can tell the deepest and densest story with the fewest number of words,” she explained.

Gerald mused that both authors’ books speak to the “power of words;” she asked Abrams and Avant-garde what that means to them.

“Words are what the world is built off of,” Avant-garde said. Words are powerful forms of expression; the way they’re said or the context they’re used in can “completely change a situation.” 

Abrams agreed, adding that in addition to being a form of expression, words are “also how you invite people into your world.”

Speaking up and using those magical words is so important, especially with so much going on in the country right now, she expressed. 

“Those who are willing to be wrong are often loud about it,” Abrams said. “They are loud and wrong, and we are quiet and right. I need us to be loud and right.”