For Immediate Release
Contact:Paxson MacDonald
804-977-1747
John Banville, Amitav Ghosh and Lee Smith Among Early Signers for the Seventh Annual Virginia Festival of the Book
Festival Slated for March 21 through 25, 2001
Charlottesville, Virginia (November 8, 2000) -- The Seventh Annual Festival of the Book announces a roster of renowned authors for this year’s Festival of the Book line-up. Irish novelist John Banville and Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, who each have new novels due out in February 2001, will be featured at the University of Virginia’s Culbreth Theatre at 8PM on Saturday, March 24, 2001. Banville, a Booker Prize finalist for The Book of Evidence, will read from his new novel, Eclipse. Ghosh, winner of the Prix Medici Etranger, one of France’s top literary awards, will read from his novel The Glass Palace.
Lee Smith, well-known for more than a dozen works of Southern Fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies and Saving Grace, from which the movie was adapted, will read on Friday, March 23 at 8PM at the Culbreth Theatre from a soon-to-be-published novel. She will also be on hand locally for book-signings.
Robert Morgan, poet and novelist, whose book Gap Creek was an Oprah Book Club Selection, will read from his novel, as will Agymah Kamau from Pictures of a Dying Man. Kamau won a Virginia Literary Award in 2000. Many authors will be available for book signings, question and answer sessions, readings and panel discussions.
The annual Festival Luncheon, which will be held on Friday, March 23, at 11:45 AM at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel, will feature award-winning author, Paule Marshall, whose novels span four decades, from Brown Girl, Brownstones to the newly published, The Fisher King. (Tickets are required for this event and can be ordered from the Fesitval office for $30.00 per person.)
Other well-known fiction authors who will participate are Carrie Brown, John Gregory Brown, John Casey, Maud Casey, Patricia Elam, Barbara Esstman, Robert Finley, Ann Hood, Ann Newton Lawther, Curt Leviant, Clint McCoum, Heather Ross Miller, Joe Ashby Porter, Alexandra Ripley, Jim Shepard, Karen Shepard and William Tester. The Festival of the Book, which hosts five days of free literary events in venues around Charlottesville, Virginia, takes place from March 21 through March 25, 2001. VA Book! 2001 is a unique literary happening for all those who enjoy and celebrate the written word.
Names of attending authors and a schedule of events for VABook! 2001 will be released and listed on the web site at www.vabook.org as they become available. For more information about the Festival, call (804) 924-6890.
