Southern Litfest Highlight: John Warley

author John Warley will talk about his new book, “A Southern Girl.” 

Southern Litfest is coming to Newnan June 5-6 to celebrate Southern literature and hospitality.

Authors and performers are scheduled for the two-day event, which will take place at various locations throughout downtown Newnan. Highlights of the festival will include:

A Southern Girl,” a compelling novel of adopting a Korean baby into an aristocratic Charleston family by John Warley, Virginia lawyer turned author – book signing follows in the old courthouse courtroom in downtown Newnan, 1:30-2:30 p.m.

Warley, a native South Carolinian, is a 1967 graduate of the Citadel. He was a roommate of author Pat Conroy, and they still enjoy meeting once a week for lunch. Warley obtained his law degree at the University of Virginia Law School and practiced law in Virginia until 1993, when he moved to Mexico to write and teach. Now a full-time writer, Warley divides his time between Beaufort, South Carolina, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He and his late wife, Barbara, have three sons, Caldwell, Nelson, and Carter, and a daughter, Mary Beth, born in Seoul, South Korea.

It was during the process of adopting and raising his Korean daughter that Warley drew his inspiration for “A Southern Girl,” his third book. At the same time, he is quick to point out that the story in the novel is not her story. “Her story is certainly interesting, and if one day the story is told, it will be told by her not me.”

The inspiration provided by his daughter has garnered praise from Warley’s peers.

“Set against the exquisite, historical backdrop of Charleston's insular South of Broad neighborhood, ‘A Southern Girl’ is a tale of international adoption and of families lost, then found anew through revelations, courage, and the perseverance of a love without bounds,” wrote “New York Times” best-selling novelist Therese Anne Fowler’s in the foreword of Warley’s book.