Author Michele Andrea Bowen will speak at the ninth annual Celebrating Women in History Month Brunch Thursday at Livingstone College.
The event, sponsored by Katharine W. Osborne, will be at 11:30 a.m. at the Aggrey Student Union Board Room.
Bowen is the author of “Church Folk,” “Second Sunday” and “Holy Ghost Corner.”
There will be a book signing after the brunch.
Bowen, who lives in Durham, went to segregated schools in St. Louis, Mo. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Washington University in St. Louis.
She earned degrees in U.S. history and public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bowen has been a social worker in mental health and child abuse, a program coordinator in health care and an instructor at the undergraduate level. She also worked at Barnes and Noble Books.
She and her daughters are members of St. Joseph’s AME Church, where she is active in the Bible study program, has been a soloist in the Inspirational Singers Choir, and works on the committee to help her pastor, the Rev. Phillip R. Cousin Jr., get elected bishop at the AME Church’s 2008 General Conference in St. Louis.
She says in her publicity material that she writes “black Christian fiction because that is what the Lord called her to write. And each novel is a venture into black church life and culture that she hopes will entertain, make you laugh out loud, inform, inspire and hopefully encourage each reader to seriously think about what a wondrous thing it is to serve the Lord.
“Church Folk” became the third book in an African-American Christian fiction line of books under a new Warner Books Imprint called Walk Worthy Press in June 2001.
Proceeds for the brunch benefit the United Negro College Fund.
For more information, contact Deborah Johnson at 704-216-6118.