The Country Bookshop Presents:

Exploring the Parallels of Billie Holiday and Marilyn Monroe: A virtual conversation with author Carole Boston Weatherford about her two books of Memoir in Verse.

Becoming Billie Holiday is a fictionalized memoir in poetry that brings alive Holiday's childhood and continues up to the moment she performed Strange Fruit on the Paris stage.

Beauty Mark: A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe is a fictionalized exploration in poetry of Marilyn's experience from childhood through her adulthood.

Kimberly Taws from The Country Bookshop will be in conversation with Carole Boston Weatherford to examine the two works and explore the parallels between Marilyn Monroe and Billie Holiday

Both books are on sale online or at The Country Bookshop

A New York Times best-selling author, Carole is one of the leading poets writing for young people today. She believes that poetry makes music with words. And she mines the past for family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles. Her work spans poetry, nonfiction, biography and historical fiction. Her latest releases are Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre and Dreams for a Daughter. Her 40-plus books include many award winners:

 Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America (NAACP Image Award)

 Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement (Caldecott Honor, Sibert Honor, Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award and Flora Steiglitz Straus Award from Bank Street College of Education)

 Sugar Hill: Harlem’s Historic Neighborhood (Arnold Adoff Early Poetry Honor)

 Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (NAACP Image Award, Coretta Scott King Award and Caldecott Honor Medal)

 Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor and the SCBWI Golden Kite Honor)

 Becoming Billie Holiday (Coretta Scott King Author Honor)

 Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sitins (North Carolina Juvenile Literature Award)

Find others on our website

For career achievements, Carole received the Ragan-Rubin Award from North Carolina English Teachers Association and the North Carolina Literature Award, among the state’s highest civilian honors. She holds an M.A. in publications design from University of Baltimore and an M.F.A. in creative writing from University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She has two adult children and lives in North Carolina, where she is a Professor of English at Fayetteville State University. Through her books and performances, her words reach millions of young readers. And as a professor, she trains current and future teachers and mentors emerging writers