VALDOSTA – Georgia’s Author of the Year will read from her award-winning novel this week at Valdosta State University.

And she’s a long-time Valdosta resident.

Roberta George will read from her book, “The Day’s Heat.” She will be joined by poet Nick Norwood, whose book “Eagle & Phenix” was published by Snake Nation Press, a Lowndes County-based publishing house founded by George.

George of Valdosta and her novel, “The Day’s Heat,” won the literary fiction category of the Georgia Author of the Year contest in 2019.

One-hundred-and-ten authors were nominated in 14 categories for the awards sponsored by the Georgia Writers Association, according to a statement from the organization.

“This novel quietly stole the day — and this reviewer’s heart,” noted Stacia Pelletier, who judged the literary fiction category. “Lee James is a young Lebanese American mother married to a white plumber and eking out a living in a small South Georgia town in the early 1960s. When local Catholic priest Father Palmer loses a tooth in an accident, Lee’s quick thinking saves the tooth and launches a series of events that will turn her life — and the entire town — upside down. 

“A page-turner, a love story where we root for the heroine to leave the guy(s) and move forward alone, and a theologically insightful tale, ‘The Day’s Heat’ deserves a broader hearing than it’s received. Pregnant Lee leaps off the page, fully realized, at least for this reader; and the story, while never preachy, challenges us to think hard about motherhood, race and moral obligation in a time beset by powerful external social forces. An unassuming triumph.”

“The Day’s Heat” was published in late 2018 after George won a novel-writing contest sponsored by Impress Books out of Exeter University in England. One of the judges was J.K. Rowling of “Harry Potter” fame. Part of the prize included publishing George’s novel, “The Day’s Heat.”

George has said in past interviews with The Valdosta Daily Times she is attracted to the dark motives of the characters in her novels. Moral choices run throughout the South Georgia author’s stories, which also include her first novel, “Baptizing the Cat,” published in late 2011, and “The Bank Robbers’ Sister,” a book she’s writing.

While her characters often make questionable choices, they usually do the right thing in the end.

Still, George often says, with a sigh and glance toward the heavens, she doesn’t know why she writes about such bad people.

George said she spent 20 years writing “The Day’s Heat.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently featured George in its pages, noting her nomination for a Townsend Prize for the novel. The award is named for “Atlanta magazine editor Jim Townsend, and bestowed every two years by the Georgia Center for the Book and the Chattahoochee Review,” according to the AJC. “The prize will be announced April 23 at the DeKalb History Center.”

Norwood “has the prerequisite chops of the poet,” according to The Valdosta Daily Times 2019 review of his book, “Eagle & Phenix.” “He can turn a marvelous phrase. He can evoke a mood. He can boil down a subject with an economy of words. He knows the best words to choose and just how to arrange them to make all of the other stuff possible.”

But he also tells stories in this poetry collection.

He tells the story of a homeowner discovering old crayon marks on a wall within a man’s childhood home. The man sees the decades-old crayon scribblings as if they are cave drawings from a lost age.

He tells the story of a woman who with her husband kept her clothes, home and yard immaculate. But now with her husband’s death and her terminal illness, she worries about the food going bad in her refrigerator and what her neighbors will think of the uncut grass.

Stories told in a matter of lines, in less than a page.

Norwood splits the book into sections. One portion contains poems about his childhood. Another section includes lyrical portraits of family members. Other sections chronicle the people populating a town.

He directs the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Ga., and Nyack, N.Y. His other poetry collections include “The Soft Blare,” “A Palace for the Heart” and “Gravel and Hawk” — winner of the Hollis Summers Prize in Poetry.

The reading is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5, VSU University Center Theater, said Marty L. Williams, VSU Department of English.