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Jeffrey Blount

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup Jeffrey Blount

Jeffrey Blount is the award-winning author of three novels. His recent book, The Emancipation of Evan Walls, was the winner of the 2020 National Indie Excellence Award for African American fiction. He is an Emmy Award-winning television director and a 2016 inductee to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. In his 34 years at NBC News, Blount directed a decade of Meet The Press, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and major special events. He is the first African American to direct the Today Show.

 

  

Schedule

12:30 pm to 1:30 pm

State Capitol, Senate Committee Room A

Rural Resilience and Redemption: Small Town Fiction

with Jeffrey Blount, C.H. Hooks, Stephen Hundley, and moderator J. Bruce Fuller

 

1:45 pm to 2:30 pm 

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

Mr. Jimmy from Around the Way: A Novel

WINNER OF THE 2024 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION

James Henry Ferguson doesn’t belong here.

After a highly publicized fall from grace, James attempts to flee from the chaos in his life. He ends up in a community he had never heard of before, one that has been neglected and ignored by everyone in rural Ham, Mississippi. A place of abject poverty, the neighborhood is commonly referred to as “Around the Way.”

Within a place forgotten by the rest of the world, politics can be a dangerous game. When a troubling discovery is made, the entire neighborhood is rocked to its core and James is forced to confront his own past in order to help the community have a future. He will have to find the strength to fight for the neighbors he once disregarded and avert a heart-breaking disaster.

A self-identified failure is forced to uncover the wisdom of his past in order to recognize that money can’t solve every problem. Full of never-ending twists and turns, no one can prepare themselves for the surprises in store. Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way is a story about failure, self-discovery, empowerment, and the possibility of redemption.