Author Weatherford at Western
The media center at Western Senior High School was transformed into Lady Day's Literary Lounge Dec. 15 when New York Times best-selling author and Baltimore native Carole Boston Weatherford presented her new book, Becoming Billie Holiday. Students donned gardenias, heard poems and music, viewed the jazz legend on film and tried their hand at writing blues.
Becoming Billie Holiday was recently cited as one of the year's best books by Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal. Illustrated by award-winning artist Floyd Cooper, the book is a fictional verse memoir, a unique format merging elements of the novel, biography, oral history, persona poem and one-woman show. Ms. Weatherford recreated the singer's voice in 97 first-person poems titled after Holiday's songs.