Georgia Today: State to audit primary election; Senator seeks charge dismissal; Author interview

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Thursday, May 30. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, the state will be doing an audit of its recent primary election. An indicted state senator wants the charges dismissed. And author Stephen Hundley tells us about his new coming-of-age novel set on a Georgia barrier island. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Peter Biello: The Georgia secretary of state's office is auditing randomly selected batches of ballots from the recent primary election. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports.

Sarah Kallis: The secretary's office used dice rolled by people who attended the event to decide which batches of ballots each county would have to audit. The race that's being audited is the statewide, nonpartisan Supreme Court seat. A law passed in the most recent legislative session requires an audit of the top statewide race each election. Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling says the audit could help improve trust in elections.

Gabe Sterling: The audit confirms the outcome, essentially. It's not intended to repeat or recreate the election again. It just mathematically shows that the machinery counted the ballots properly.

Sarah Kallis: Sterling says that all counties must participate in the audit, and that the process and final results will be open to the public. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Atlanta.

Story 2:

Peter Biello: A new state law gives Georgians recovering from addiction more options for treatment by clarifying zoning laws. HB 1073 removes the state code requiring recovery residences to wait longer for zoning approval. GPB's Ellen Eldridge has more.

Ellen Eldridge: Local requests to rezone properties in Georgia typically take between 15 and 45 days under the state code. But until this year, that wasn't true for all properties. Brent Moore is the founder of Redeemed Living in Valdosta.

Brent Moore: But anything rehab-, drug- and alcohol-related has to go through a six-month minimum — six months, maximum nine months, I think, waiting period from the time of the first meeting. And so that was the loophole the neighbors found.

Ellen Eldridge: Moore says their campus is finally open, more than a year after its first of three votes for zoning approval. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.

Story 3:

Peter Biello: A state senator indicted in Georgias 2020 election interference case is asking a state judge to dismiss the charges against him. Norcross Republican Shawn Still is among 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump, charged in the sprawling case. At a hearing yesterday, Still's attorney Tom Beaver argued still should not face criminal charges for his role in the meeting of the Republican false electors nearly four years ago.

Tom Beaver: I must say I've never seen a fraud perpetrated, wide open in front of the public with a court reporter present with a videographer present, with media present in broad daylight in front of 15 other people.

Peter Biello: Prosecutors argued that the meeting was part of a larger conspiracy to overturn the popular vote in Georgia. Judge Scott McAfee has not issued a ruling on the motion.

Caption

Kia

Story 4:

Peter Biello: Korean automaker Kia has begun production of its first American-made electric vehicles at its factory in West Point. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff joined company officials in celebrating the milestone there today. Kia announced in July of last year that it would invest $200 million in its West Point facility to produce its EV9 SUV. Producing in the U.S. will allow the vehicle to qualify for federal tax credits to lower its cost to consumers.

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Officials in Augusta yesterday celebrated the reopening of one of the city's most popular entertainment venues. The Bell Auditorium has been closed since June of last year for a $17 million renovation and expansion. Cedric Johnson, of the Augusta Richmond County Coliseum Authority, says most everything inside the venue, from its grand entry hall to its bathrooms, has been refurbished, and there's also a new speakeasy and club. It's all part of a larger entertainment complex aimed at bringing more visitors downtown.

Cedric Johnson: In fact, this is considered Phase 1 of the larger project, which will be a 10,500-seat arena, brand-new, that will be the pride of Augusta, I think.

Peter Biello: The project is funded by a voter-approved special purpose local option sales tax. The first performance at the renovated Bell Auditorium will be piano rocker Ben Folds on Friday.

Caption

Aviation

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Middle Georgia State University is partnering with the Metro Atlanta School System to give high school students interested in aviation a jumpstart on their education. 11th and 12th graders at the Fayette County Public School Center of Innovation can take the prerequisite courses for the flight program at Middle Georgia State University in Macon and Eastman. The dean of the University School of Aviation, Aiden Clark, says the courses allow students to explore the industry before committing to a career path.

Aiden Clark: So maybe you have somebody that's thinking about aviation, but not 100% sure. It might be a way for them to kind of dip their toe in the water and see if it's something that they're really interested in, without having to make a drastic move.

Peter Biello: Middle Georgia State University has similar partnerships with three other school systems. Clark says he hopes the partnerships show students the different opportunities available to them within aviation, from air traffic control to airport management.

Caption

Author Stephen Hundley at GPB's studios in Atlanta.

Credit: Peter Biello

Story 7:

Peter Biello: The teenage years can be an incredibly emotional time. The urge to push boundaries and explore the larger world can be overwhelming. Now imagine you're a teenager with all those feelings, living in the wilderness of a Georgia barrier island. That's the premise of the new novel by Steven Hundley. It's called Bomb Island, and in it, a teenager named Fish lives as the adopted son of island dwellers who make their living running boat tours of the site where a nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped into the ocean. It's a story of growing up, finding your own way and surviving unusual and sometimes dangerous conditions. Steven Hundley joins me now. Thank you very much for speaking with me.

Stephen Hundley: Thank you, Peter; thank you for having me.

Peter Biello: So tell me a little bit about the main character, Fish, this 15-year-old boy. Lot of rage inside him. What's the inspiration for Fish?

Stephen Hundley: The inspiration for Fish. I think it was maybe David Joy who said that most characters start, you know, as a reflection of the author. But I think the magic of the novel is over the long course of the time that you spend with those characters, they develop into something more. And it really does feel miraculous.

Peter Biello: So what was the starting point and how did you see him develop?

Stephen Hundley: I wanted someone that was going to be at a crux point. I think that is what you're trying to leverage with a coming of age, someone that has a lot of life ahead of them, a lot of choices to make and a lot of forces pulling them one way or another. With Fish in particular, his chosen family, some of them respond to violence with violence and some respond to violence and aggression with sort of, measured passivity. And Fish has to decide how he's going to handle it.

Peter Biello: So, Fish, when we start this book, he's living on Bomb Island. And his mother figure, if you will, is Whistle and Whistle long before the start of the action of the novel brought him to Bomb Island, and he kind of learns from her. She's a peacenik in a lot of ways, and spreads love wherever she can and lets him sort of spread his wings to the extent that he can on a very small island. And it seems to me that at the beginning of the novel, he's really pushing up against the boundaries of this small place and the — the rules that he doesn't quite buy into that — that Whistle sort of imposes on him.

Stephen Hundley: Yeah. You know, he was raised by rebellious types. And even when you're raised by rebellious types, they're still the force to push against. So it's definitely the case for Fish. And I think a barrier island was such a great location for a coming of age, because you have to go out, you have to push the boundaries. The, you know, the island is very small. It's only 3 miles by a mile and a half. So by his very, you know, morning walks, he's pushing the boundaries.

Peter Biello: I mean it's a great metaphor for — for being that age in general. You don't have to be on a literal island to feel like your parents have created something of an island around you.

Stephen Hundley: Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Peter Biello: The action of the novel has to do with forces off the island — again, another metaphor — and Fish's desire somewhat to get close to Celia. Can you tell us about this budding adolescent relationship?

Stephen Hundley: The book is not billed as a romance, and Fish is young enough that I wanted his his exchange with Celia to really be an artist's relationship. I wanted them —

Peter Biello: Tattoos, in this case.

Stephen Hundley: Tattoos and illustration for Fish. He's sort of like, a neophyte to the tattoo world. The first tattoos he sees are on Celia, and they've all been done with ballpoint pens. So that's his starting point. But I wanted the exchange of art and the appreciation of art to be what grounded and connected him and Celia. And later in the book, you'll see they get to meet each other again in early adulthood. But most of the book deals with that adolescent meeting and just the exchange in the appreciation of a really cool piece of tiger art that he sloppily pens into the back of Celia.

Peter Biello: Also should mention that all the names are kind of unusual —

Stephen Hundley: Yes.

Peter Biello: — in this book, kind of representative of the unusual family structure. There's a guy named Reef, and then there's Whistle, of course, and then the main character, we know, is Fish, and we don't know him any other way. Just Fish. F-I-S-H.

Stephen Hundley: Yeah.

Peter Biello: Just worth mentioning that. There is a tiger on this island. Tiger shouldn't be there. The tiger's name is Sugar. And the tiger introduces an element of danger. Because Fish and his chosen family, they don't live like in standard houses. They live, like, in tree houses. They live very close to nature, and they are kind of at the mercy of this tiger. If the tiger wanted to be meaner, it could be. Tell us about the inspiration for — for putting a tiger on this island.

Stephen Hundley: Well, first off, I should say that Sugar's an Atlanta native.

Peter Biello: Really?

Stephen Hundley: Yeah, he comes from a garage in Atlanta. It's a little outside of the frame of the novel, but, all the characters come from Atlanta and moved to the island —

Peter Biello: Okay.

Stephen Hundley:  — in a sort of escape. With the tiger I wanted, you know, I started as a short story writer. I have a lot of love for that form. And in short story, we work a lot with chronic tension and acute tension. So whereas the atomic bomb is sort of the chronic tension and is baked into the psyche and the dreams and the mythos of the place and the characters, Sugar is the acute tension. He's the bomb that's exploding now. So he functions in that way to put an edge and really pressure the narrative. I think my strategy with Sugar, with the bomb, with the violence coming from the mainland, was to immerse my characters in a place that I personally wanted to spend a lot of time into, and just begin to turn up the pressure until the narrative and the action became inevitable.

Peter Biello: The bomb is not, I would say, as big a presence as we're led to believe by the title of the book, as you mentioned, it's there, it's unexploded. I didn't have the sense as a reader that it was even really a threat, just kind of the thing that gets people interested in this place.

Stephen Hundley: Yes. Yeah, one thing I like to do in this book is talk about the the ways that the South modifies commercializes and advertises their disasters, their oddities. You know, in Kansas, you'll drive out to see the largest ball of twine. Here in fictitious South Georgia, you'll see on the highway billboards that say "touch death" and "brush eternity" and that kind of thing. So the bomb comes from a real bomb off Tybee, which is Savannah's beach. And I do not believe they market it in the same way. But here in the world of fiction, the town can fully embrace it. And you're right, yeah, it's not a pressing danger. More of, like, providing an atmosphere of mystery and hazard and sort of this Bermuda Triangle effect I wanted to produce. Growing up around these barrier islands like I did, you got the feeling that things collected there and anything was possible there. And there was a myth of purity around them. Of course, they've all been clear-cut two or three times over the hundreds of years; but still, that mythos of possibility where anything could appear.

Peter Biello: The real life bomb off Tybee. Is that an atomic bomb?

Stephen Hundley: I believe so, yes.

Peter Biello: Did it arrive there in the same way, with planes sort of colliding and then dropping it?

Stephen Hundley: A simulated bombing run and a simulated fighter escort, I believe, collided and they jettisoned it.

Peter Biello: I don't want to give away the ending of the book. Readers — readers should make their way to the end. It's great. But I will say that Fish spends some time on the island without his chosen family and make some decisions about the rest of his life. I'm wondering how you felt about leaving Fish where you left him at the end.

Stephen Hundley: I wanted to leave Fish in a place of possibility. And I think whenever you deal with a character in literary fiction, there's an expectation for growth. And I think that this story had to push fFsh in one direction or another. And like you say, I'll leave it to the reader to see which way he goes. But I was hopeful. Like I say, you start the character knowing them, and through the course of the novel they surprise you. And I'm very hopeful for Fish and what comes next for him.

Peter Biello: The book is Bomb Island. Steven Hundley, thank you so much for speaking with me about it.

Stephen Hundley: Thank you Peter.

Story 8:

Peter Biello: In sports, Atlanta United snapped a nine-game winless streak to top Inter Miami 3 to 1 on the road last night. Atlanta United's last win in MLS play was against Chicago on March 31. In baseball, the Braves face the Nationals at home again tonight. This comes after a 7 to 2 loss last night. Reynaldo Lopez is scheduled to get the start for the Braves. The Atlanta Dream beat the Washington Mystics 73 to 67 last night. Allisha Gray led the Dream with 19 points. and Atlanta's newest women's professional indoor volleyball team, the Atlanta Vibe, finished its inaugural season this month with an average of 3,200 fans per game at Gas South Arena. The league has released its overall attendance and viewership numbers, boasting 400,000 fans and nearly 4 million viewers streaming matches on YouTube nationwide.

Peter Biello: And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, take a moment. Do it now. We'll be back in your podcast feed tomorrow with all the latest news from Georgia. And as always, if you have feedback or a story idea, we want to hear from you. Email us. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org I'm Peter Biello. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news