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Saturday, May 24, 2014

Celestial Blue Skies Book Signings

Celestial Blue Skies
I will be Signing Purchased Copies of My Novel at 
The Community Bookstore
2523 Bayou Rd. 
New Orleans
on
JUNE 28, 2014
I will also READ excerpts from my novel
including the Curse of the Mulatto
Please email your friends about this event.
I will also be at the 
LOUISIANA BOOK FESTIVAL 
on November 1, 2014 as a featured Panalist
My novel was a finalist in the William Faulkner William Wisdom Worldwide Contest
It has been recognized by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
I am a Fellow with the Center for Black Literature in New York
Thank you for coming to my website.



Praise for Celestial Blue Skies Reviews

Maggie Collins’ mesmerizing novel takes us deep into the hearts and minds of a Louisiana creole family struggling to maintain their dignity and traditional values within an uncompromising world full of poverty, superstition, and intolerance. Celeste, the main character, must navigate through the rigid cultural code demanded from her family as she strives to transcend the bad reputation her mother has acquired in the community. She soon learns that those demands, although at times brutal and suffocating in the hands of her grandmother and matriarch, Maymay, come from a source of genuine love and caring. The values she learns from her family are what eventually guide her towards a stronger sense of self and a better, self-fulfilling life. A fabulous read, full of engaging complex characters and fascinating situations, Celestial Blue Skies, invites us to consider that at times the only type of love that can help us survive is an exacting, fierce one. --J.L. Torres, author of The Accidental Native and Boricua Passport Editor Saranac Review


 Maggie Collins writes about real people who live on the page. Celeste Bastille is a young woman who will win the reader and stay in her memory. Most of the characters are as vivid as Celeste and they are a family. As much as you want Celeste to find happiness in her own life, the family needs her. Collins weaves a tale as intriguing as the folktale that is the basis for the book. Celeste earns her Celestial Blue Sky. ~ Lee Grue, Editor, The New Laurel Review

It isn't often that I get to visit Creole homes in southwest Louisiana and just listen. I like to tell my friends here in Europe that New Orleans is a city of tribes who are more or less friendly to one another. Within the black community there are tribes with complex differences, within the white community there are tribes. But the tribe I love the most is the tribe of the heart. Ms. Collins is surely part of that. Celestial Blue Skies is a book of the heart. It describes a Creole family in southwest Louisiana some few years ago, with the authority of an insider. I found myself peering through watery eyes a number of times. Truthful books touch you that way. ~ Gordon Walmsley, Editor, The Copenhagen Review

Praise from Other Readers
 This book had me shaking at Chapter 3. I haven't read something like this since Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden.
Debbie Knatt Jones

Growing up in Louisiana in a small town and a Creole family, I was able to relate to this book. Of course it had the boudin, crackling, hot crawfish and crabs, the sugar cane and the Zydeco music that we Creoles love, but most of all, it had the love of family Maymay is like so many creole women I know. She holds the family together durning a crisis.
If I could tell the author anything, I would tell her thank you for writing this book because it reminded me of the love that I had with my grandmother. I had a digital copy but my son got me a hard copy for Mother's Day. Truthfully this is one of the best books I have read in a long time.

Terry Noel




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