Looking for Frank Wills: Wesley Brown in conversation with Daniel Black

Join us for an evening with author Wesley Brown to discuss his new book Looking for Frank Wills, a re-imagining of the life of security guard Frank Wills and what was stolen from him after he was briefly thrust into the spotlight during the Watergate scandal. Brown be in conversation with Daniel Black.

44th & 3rd will be our bookstore partner for the evening. Preorder Looking for Frank Wills from them or buy it at the event.

This event will be in the Auditorium of Decatur Library, on the Ground Floor. Due to new security protocols, guests must enter the building through the upper level, rear doors, and then take the elevator to "G." Elevators open at 6:30. Please arrive early to ensure extra time for security.

About the Book: It’s 1972. Tricky Dick is in office, James Brown is on the radio, and Wayne Beasley reluctantly presides over the comings and goings of his barbers and patrons at Wayne’s Clip and Trim in North Augusta, South Carolina. When one of Wayne’s former customers, an unassuming small-town son, is designated 4-F, unfit to serve in Vietnam, he seeks refuge in becoming the next best thing—a security guard for a downtown DC hotel. It is there on a hot summer’s night, that Wayne’s wayward patron interrupts a break-in that will disrupt the course of a nation’s history and his own. In Looking for Frank Wills, Wesley Brown, author of Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, and Blue in Green: A Novella, once again remaps the tributaries that run into the stream of our American subconscious, by dipping into the headwaters of pivotal memories and histories to tell the tale from the perspective of the real folks whose stories were too long submerged. Without Frank Wills there is no Watergate. And without Watergate the veil of secrecy and corruption that came to define the Nixon years, warping the very fabric of political discourse from that moment on, would have remained firmly in place. This re-imagining of the life of Frank Wills reconciles the greatest heist of all—a place in the American story. What was stolen from Wills as he was briefly thrust into the spotlight, while excluded from the annals of history, is reclaimed, as Brown gives voice and breath to the people who loved him and the barber who did his best to guide him.

About the Author: Wesley Brown is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, a novella, and five plays. He is professor emeritus in English at Rutgers University and a former visiting professor in the Arts Division at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He wrote the narration for a segment of the 1997 PBS documentary W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, has held visiting writer residencies in creative writing at the University of Minnesota, New York University, Bennington College, and Sarah Lawrence College, and is co-editor of The Methuen Drama Anthology of American Women Playwrights: 1970–2020. A new edition of his first novel, Tragic Magic, was published, as a part of the Of the Diaspora series, by McSweeney’s in 2021. He lives in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

About the Conversation Partner: Daniel Black is an author and professor of African American studies at Clark Atlanta University. His books include The Coming, Perfect Peace, and They Tell Me of a Home. He is the winner of the Distinguished Writer Award from the Middle-Atlantic Writer's Association and has been nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Ernest J. Gaines Award,and the Georgia Author of the Year Award. He was raised in Blackwell, Arkansas, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.