Local author Melissa Newman was invited to have her two novels – Sister Blackberry and House of Cleaving – featured at the Annual Kentucky Book Fair. This is her second year as a featured author for the annual November event, which is billed as one of the largest book fairs of its kind.

When Newman’s second novel, House of Cleaving, was released this past summer, book fair organizers invited Newman to come back with the second novel because the first, Sister Blackberry, enjoyed much success at the 2010 book fair.

The local author was in some very good company this year as she hosted the same crowd as beloved Kentucky author Bobbie Ann Mason, who was at the fair this year with her new novel, The Girl in the Blue Beret; and Kentucky’s own Nancy Jensen, one of the newest faculty members for the Master of Fine Arts program at Eastern Kentucky University. Jensen was at the fair with her first novel The Sisters, which was recently given a very nice review in Oprah Winfrey’s “O” Magazine and has enjoyed much national acclaim.

Newman has recently enjoyed some good reviews of her own lately as her new novel House of Cleaving was the November featured title in Kentucky Living Magazine. Reviewer, Penny Woods, said Newman “has a talent for masterfully weaving characters together.” Literary review magazine, Chapter 16, has also given House of Cleaving favorable comments as well as Sister Blackberry.

Local author, Melissa Newman, recently enjoyed her second year at the Kentucky Book Fair. She was invited back to the fair with her newest novel House of Cleaving after her first novel Sister Blackberry enjoyed much success at the book fair in 2010. The Kentucky Book Fair is one of the largest of its kind. This year was the fair’s 30th anniversary.

Newman is now working on her third and fourth novels – “Wilder Girls,” a humorous story about a perpetual bachelor raising two little girls alone; and “The Gittie Bridge,” whose contents are yet to be publicly revealed.