Publicity is a weird thing for writers. I’ve just come back from the second book tour of my career. The first time, in 2002, I went out on the road to promote Leaving Atlanta, a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders. My publisher, Warner Books, decided to package me as a “southern” writer. For the last couple of months, I’ve been on the road with The Untelling, another novel set in Atlanta. But this go round, I’m doing it as a “black” writer. I know that we are a nation that strives for color-blindness, so it seems sort of inherently offensive to label a writer as “black”. But this is what happened to me, and I have to tell you that, for the most part, it wasn’t so bad. Especially when you compare it to my book tour as a “southern” writer.
