Mary Helen Stefaniak

Independent bookstores around the country have chosen The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, as an Indie Next pick for September! It will be featured in the September IndieBound newsletter in bookstores and online. It will also be featured in September, with a story-behind-the-novel essay, at www.powells.com.

Only a few weeks remain (more…)

If you’d like to know why Georgia and Baghdad occur together on the cover and in the pages of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, you can watch a quick and casual video of the author (me) talking about the book on the red stone steps at the corner of the Duchesne high school campus, with the crab apple trees in full bloom behind me and only the occasional passing car to compete with. In a second short video made in the same spot, I only stumble once while reading a little bit about Theo Boykin from the book. Search for Stefaniak on YouTube.

I have to tell you that I'm extremely excited at the prospect of reading from The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia in Flannery O'Connor's historic home at Andalusia, in Milledgeville, GA, on October 18th. You may or may not know that my mother attended Peabody High School in Milledgeville with (Mary) Flannery O'Connor. (more…)

A bound galley--complete with cover design--was in my mailbox Friday, the ultimate proof that my "vivid, continuous dream" of a novel is really a book that may find its way into other people's hands (and maybe their vivid dreams as well). Once again, I'm grateful, humbled, hopeful, and just plain thrilled. I'm probably not (more…)

It was a pleasure to read from The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia to a great lunchtime audience at the headquarters of the Nebraska Arts Council, 1004 Farnam Street, in Omaha. The thirty or so people filling the tables and extra chairs laughed in all the right places, much to my delight, while I (more…)

On Tuesday, March 16, after a lunch of corned beef and cabbage at the Omaha Field Club, I had the pleasure of visiting with more than sixty members of the Eclectic Book Club of Omaha. (Thank you, Jane, for the invitation!) I gave them a preview of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia,which will be out in September, by reading a few short passages--introducing them to Miss Spivey, handsome Force Cailiff, and the ingenious Theo Boykin, smartest person in Piedmont County--and by talking about how I came to put "Baghdad" and "Georgia" together in my novel. I was surprised to meet (more…)