Lafayette Reads Together Joshua Davis' 'Spare Parts'

            Lafayette Reads Together is back, choosing “Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream” by Joshua Davis as the community read.

Here’s how it works, Acadiana readers enjoy how four Latino students overcame the odds to take on MIT and other top-notch schools in a national underwater robotics competition and then discuss and enjoy events planned around the book, including a visit from the author on Feb. 23. Davis is the author of several books, with “Spare Parts” being adapted into a documentary, “Underwater Dreams,” and then a 2015 movie, “Spare Parts,” starring George Lopez, Carlos Pena, Marisa Tomei and Jamie Lee Curtis. He is also a film producer and co-founder of Epic Magazine and Epic Digital. He has been a contributing editor at Wired since 2003, and also written for the New Yorker, GQ, Outside, Maxim, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health and Food & Wine. The PG movie will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday at South Regional and 5:30 p.m. Jan. 28 at North Regional. The documentary and discussion will be shown in February. Other events include a robotics day. For more information and to see a schedule of events and obtain a copy of the book, visit http://lafayettepubliclibrary.org.

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The first event of the spring semester for the UL Lafayette Concert Series will be “Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance” beginning at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Burke Hall Theater on campus. “Of Ebony Embers” is a chamber music theater work that combines an actor portraying multiple characters and a pianist performing works of African American composers. The event celebrates the lives of the great African American poets Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay. The event is free to students, faculty and staff and general admission is $15.

Ceremonies for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s ninth annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence will begin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Manship Theatre at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge. This year’s recipient is T. Geronimo Johnson, author of “Welcome to Braggsville.” Doors open at 6 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, although reservations are requested at rsvp@braf.org. Johnson will read from his winning selection, “Welcome to Braggsville,” a socially provocative and dark comedic novel about four University of California, Berkeley students who stage a protest during a Civil War reenactment in rural Georgia. Johnson will also speak at a special book talk at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Ernest J. Gaines Center on the UL-Lafayette campus.

The Writers and Readers Symposium: A Celebration of Literature and Art, will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 20 at Hemingbough in St. Francisville. Authors include award-winning author Margaret McMullan, who in 2015, with Phillip Lopate curated “Every Father’s Daughter,” an anthology of essays about fathers by great women writers such as Alice Munro, Ann Hood and Jane Smiley. Writer and photographer Philip Gould, muralist Robert Dafford, poet Mona Lisa Saloy and author Michael Rubin will also present and sign their books. There will be workshops for beginning and experienced writers from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 21 (the following day) at the West Feliciana Parish Library. Participants should sign up before Jan. 31 so they can enter work to be critiqued. For more information, contact Dr. Olivia Pass at oliviapass@bellsouth.net or visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2420433.

Book events
            Alan G. Gauthreaux will speak about his collection of mysterious and overlooked mysteries, “Dark Bayou — Infamous Louisiana Homicides,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, at the East Bank Regional Library, Metairie.