Viral Literature: Alone Together in Georgia

“This is an inspiring work of the populist imagination, in the best senses of both ‘populist’ and ‘imagination.’ Some thirty plus works of narrative and poetic resourcefulness offer a range of responses to the early months of the pandemic. It’s far more than a set of laments; we find here a vigorous and hopeful treasury of lives lived in those dark months of 2020, along with broader histories and geographies that locate the experience within what proves to be the very lively territory of Georgians’ creativity.”~Professor Leonard Barkan, Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. Viral Literature: Alone Together in Georgia assembled 32 writers from Georgia’s creative community to encounter the COVID-19 pandemic with the best of their art. Inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, a collection of 100 stories told by ten young friends in seclusion from the 14th-century bubonic plague, this anthology shares fiction and memoir, verse and reflection from some of the best storytellers and poets in the state. Some of the work directly confronts the challenges of the global coronavirus health crisis in 2020, while others do not. But every entry circles the same theme, seen through the lens of observation and the filter of imagination: how we all deal with the isolation and transcendent camaraderie of our shared experience in Georgia, brought into focus by the pandemic of our time. Here, at the intersection of life and art, we may yet find needed perspective and meaning. . “I confess to reading this book out of order, flipping first to entries written by authors I already knew – Kay, Musser, Ray, Ramsey, Rawlings. I savored their contributions and then worked through those by authors I wasn’t yet familiar with – poets and writers such as Cardenas, White, Salcedo, Kamal and Black – and found the same quality of thought, of introspection, and an ability to inform and entertain using the written word. The compiler of this diverse, entertaining book (fiction and non-fiction; poetry and prose) hoped to provide readers with meaningful, topical material during an exceptional pandemic. He succeeded splendidly.”~Daniel M. Roper, Publisher and Editor, Georgia Backroads magazine. “Viral Literature does what I’d always hoped the Decatur Book Festival would do… document the wild, glorious, and diverse abundance of talent that calls this region home. Together, these pieces tell the story of this place and time, but it also demonstrates the strength of this community of writers.”~Daren Wang, Founder of the AJC Decatur Book Festival & Author of The Hidden Light of Northern Fires. Clayton H. Ramsey is a former two-term president and current VP of Contests, Awards & Scholarships of the Atlanta Writers Club (AWC), a community of more than 1,000 writers that was founded in 1914. Collectively, the AWC Board knows that we’ve all felt many different emotions during this time of pandemic—fear, boredom, helplessness, hopelessness, uncertainty, and they trust this anthology will give readers a chance to laugh and ponder and cry and reflect. Instead of division and hurt, they want to promote creativity and healing. They hope in some small way our part of the commonwealth of writers can help rebuild our corner of the world disrupted by the virus. The proceeds will go to charity, but our highest purpose is giving an opportunity for the constructive power of art to do its work in our distressed lives and society.