Fort Bend Lifestyles and Homes Magazine Feb 2010: Literacy Announces "The Enchantment of Reading"

Mark your calendars and Save The Date for the 10th Annual Book and Author Dinner on Feb. 21. This enchanting experience begins at 5:30 p.m. at The Marriott Sugar Land Town Square. Don ’t miss the opportunity to meet and greet some of your favorite authors at this legacy event.

Event guests will have an opportunity to mingle with and purchase books by their favorite author. Dinner will be served in the main ballroom where speaking authors will be featured. Following dinner, authors will again participate in book-signing sessions. Event proceeds will be used to carry on the work of the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County.

Guest author Jan Bethancourt, author of Be Empowered! Eat Chocolate for Breakfast received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and has studied fine arts extensively at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A native Texan, she has been married for 33 years, living in Fort Bend County for the past 28 years. She is the mother of a daughter, and a married son who, along with his wife, recently blessed their family with a new grandson.

Guest author Louise Parsley, author of Revelations in the Rearview Mirror: One Mother’s Hard-won and Hilarious Epiphanies

on the Road to the Empty Nest started writing when her three children were young as a means of preserving her sanity. She began writing about family life in community newspapers and magazines, and people responded to her warmth, humor and powerful honesty by begging for more. Louise now speaks across the country in schools, women ’s groups, churches, prisons, organizations that serve the disabled and anywhere people need to laugh and cry about the crazy love that is family. She lives in Houston.

Guest author ReShonda Tate-Billingsley is the author of the nonfiction book Help! I’ve Turned into My Mother and six previous adult novels: My Brother’s Keeper, for which she

received the prestigious Gold Pen Award for Best New Author from the Black Writer ’s Alliance and the Nova Lee Nation Award from the Greater Dallas Writing Association; the national bestseller and No. 1 Essence bestseller Let the Church Say Amen, chosen for Library Journal’s Best of 2004 list for Christian fiction; I Know I’ve Been Changed, a main Selection of the Black Expressions Book Club and No. 1 Dallas Morning News bestseller; the sequel to Let the Church Say Amen and a USA Today 2007 “Summer Sizzler” and Essence bestseller Everybody Say Amen; The Pastor’s Wife, also an Essence bestseller and Can I Get A Witness. Her previous teen novels are Friends ’Til The End, Fair-Weather Friends, Getting Even, With Friends Like These, Blessings in Disguise, and Nothing But Drama.

Every year, Literacy Council’s annual Book and Author Dinner brings together readers and writers, highlighting accomplishments made possible because of the gift of literacy. Become a partner in the Literacy Council ’s efforts to help determined adults in this county change their lives by improving reading and writing skills.

For sponsorship information or more information, visit www.ftbendliteracy.org or call 281-240-8181.l