Seventeen years after The Help made her a literary phenomenon, Kathryn Stockett is bringing her long-awaited second novel to downtown Columbus. The New York Times best-selling author will appear at a free, come-and-go reception on Sept. 17 at The Tavern, 418 Second Ave. N., starting at 5 p.m. and running for one hour.
The Columbus stop is part of Stockett's 2026 tour for The Calamity Club, and according to The Commercial Dispatch, the event will be hosted by Friendly City Books. Emily Liner, owner of the bookstore, said Stockett and her publisher wanted her to visit all the bookstores in Mississippi, a detail that speaks to how personally Stockett is treating this return swing through her home state. Copies of both The Help and The Calamity Club will be sold at the event, and readers can meet Stockett and have their books signed. Stockett may also offer short remarks toward the end of the reception, and the event will include a cash bar.
A Novel Set During the Great Depression in Oxford
The Calamity Club is set in Oxford, Mississippi, during the Great Depression in 1933, and follows three women on the margins who plan to take back control of their lives. Among them are Charlie, described as a gritty woman with a troubled past; Birdie Calhoun, a 24-year-old unmarried woman who travels to Oxford seeking financial help; and Meg, an 11-year-old orphan at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. Per Stockett's own website, as relayed by the Dispatch, the novel balances themes of poverty and hypocrisy with humor, heart and mischief. Stockett has described her characters as steel magnolias in an era when women were expected to be shrinking violets.
The book's commercial performance has been striking. Liner noted that The Calamity Club is the best-selling hardcover fiction book in independent bookstores around the country, and it ranks No. 2 on The New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list. Those figures track with national reporting: the novel debuted at No. 1 on the Times hardcover fiction list after its May 5 release and held a spot on national bestseller charts for 16 consecutive weeks through late August, according to Parade. As of late August, the book also ranked No. 2 among Goodreads' most-read titles in the United States, with a 4.62 out of 5 rating across nearly 294,000 reader reviews, the outlet reported.
Seven Years, an Abandoned Draft and a New Publisher
Getting The Calamity Club to shelves was not a quick process. Stockett began writing the novel in 2013 and produced an 800-page draft over seven years before abandoning the project in 2020 due to writer's block, Parade reported. She later restructured the story with Julie Grau, co-founder of Spiegel & Grau, working without a formal contract for years before signing a publication deal. Spiegel & Grau was relaunched as a standalone, boutique press by co-founders Cindy Spiegel and Grau, according to Literature Lust, and Stockett signed with the independent house after her original publisher canceled her contract during her long stretch of writer's block.
That drawn-out road to a second book echoes the path Stockett took to her first. The Help, which explores the lives of Black domestic workers and their white employers in 1960s Jackson, was turned down by 60 literary agents over three years before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent her, per Wikipedia. The novel went on to spend more than 100 weeks on the Times bestseller list and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Its 2011 film adaptation earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, with Octavia Spencer winning Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Minny Jackson, a role for which Spencer had originally served as Stockett's real-life inspiration, according to The Guardian. The film was primarily shot in Greenwood, Mississippi, with additional scenes filmed in Jackson, Clarksdale and Greenville.
A Mississippi Author With Mississippi Roots
Stockett was born and raised in Jackson and graduated from the University of Alabama. She later worked in magazine publishing and marketing in New York City for nine years before The Help's success, and she now splits her time between her home outside Natchez and New York City.
The Columbus stop also lands at a busy moment for the city's literary scene. Friendly City Books, founded in November 2020 by former policy executive Emily Liner after the closure of a local Books-A-Million left Columbus without a retail bookstore, per the Mississippi Free Press, received the Humanities Partner Award from the Mississippi Humanities Council in December 2024 for its public literacy programming across Lowndes County. Just weeks before Stockett's visit, the store organized the third annual Possumtown Book Fest on Aug. 29, drawing 50 Southern authors to the Rosenzweig Arts Center.
The Tavern, the venue hosting Stockett's reception, opened as a public wine bar in summer 2025 under restaurant owner Doug Pellum before ending its regular public operations in August 2026 to shift toward a private event booking model, according to the Dispatch. The Sept. 17 reception with Stockett is free and open to the public.
