The Madison Avenue Book Club is inviting the community to meet two local authors, Teresa Nicholas and Gerard Helferich, at the Madison Library on Monday, September 12 at 6 p.m.
Nicholas will talk about her two memoirs: “Buryin’ Daddy: Putting My Lebanese, Catholic, Southern Baptist Childhood to Rest,” which was published in 2011, and “The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir” – recently published in 2021.
She was born and raised in Yazoo City and educated in the Yazoo City public schools. After graduating from Swarthmore College, she worked in book publishing in New York City for 25 years. In 2002, she began freelance writing and contributing articles and essays to The Bitter Southerner, NPR’s Opinion Page, Mississippi and Delta magazines, and a variety of other publications.
Nicholas published her first biography, “Willie: The Life of Willie Morris,” in 2016. This year, she was honored with the Life Writing Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She is currently a student in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Mississippi University for Women.
“Readers will find the place names and experiences of this sixth-generation Mississippian familiar, and her insights enlightening,” Madison Avenue Book Club Member Rosie Bayer said.
The second author, Gerard Helferich, is a highly praised non-fiction writer and Nicholas’s husband. He will discuss his works, which include “High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta,” winner of the 2008 Authors Award for nonfiction from the Mississippi Library Association; “Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin: Madness, Vengeance, and the Campaign of 1912,” which was a New York Times e-book bestseller; and “An Unlikely Trust: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Improbable Partnership That Remade American Business.”
Helferich’s first work of fiction, “Hot Time: A Mystery,” which was published this year under the pen name W. H. Flint, received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Helferich also publishes book reviews in the Wall Street Journal and offers a course, “How to Edit What You Write,” in the Millsaps College Community Enrichment Program. Helferich, like Nicholas, is a Swarthmore graduate and was an editor and publisher in New York City for 25 years before turning to writing.
The couple split their time living both in Jackson, Mississippi and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The library invites the community to enjoy one or more of their books and join them for conversation and refreshments with these two local authors.
