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April 27 – May 4, 2006 Edition

Atria Senior Editor

Launches Nonprofit

Event for Ethic Authors

Malaika Adero, a senior editor at Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, has launched a nonprofit organization to produce an annual book and arts festival. The group, Up South, Inc., will hold the event each year beginning this fall.

The Up South International Book Festival will be held September 29-October 1 in Harlem and will feature African, Latino and Asian-American artists and writers, dancers, musicians and actors. Among authors already accepting an invitation to appear are Ruby Dee, Reyna Grande, Maryse Condé, Guillermo Arriaga, Edward P. Jones Marie-Elena John, and Greg Tate.

The Festival will be held in The Gatehouse, a new Harlem event hall with a seating capacity of 180 people. Among sponsors will be Hue-Man Bookstore. Atria is lending its support to the festival along with other publishers.

Adero hopes the organization can partner with publishers to market individual authors and projects. She also hopes to expand the event to a five-day affair by 2008.