2002 Virginia Festival of the Book Program Highlights

Charlottesville, VA. .2/11/02 .The Eighth Annual Virginia Festival of the Book (VABook! 2002) will be held March 20-24, 2002 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Festival is a five-day literary feast featuring authors of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and special interests, as well as publishing professionals and programs for children and families.

Poetry & Drama

This year the festival will host Jimmy Santiago Baca, a Mexican-American poet also of Apache ancestry, who came to the craft at first as rehabilitation from his illiteracy and incarceration at an early age on a drug charge; now he's been called "the heir to Pablo Neruda." The Virginia State Poet Laureate, Grace Simpson, will open the festival and read with UVa faculty member, Stephen Cushman. Also from UVa, Gregory Orr will read from his New and Selected Poems, twenty-five years in the making, and Rita Dove will participate in a staged reading of The Darker Face of the Earth, her retelling of the Oedipus myth (with the backdrop of American slavery). The Poetry Daily website, Charlottesville-based, reaches hundreds of thousands of readers daily; this year they've invited 2002 National Book Critics Circle nominee, Albert Goldbarth, to read joined by David Kirby and Barbara Hamby.

Fiction

First, a Culbreth afternoon with feminist storyteller Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina). Then, a night with rising authors Elizabeth Benedict (Almost), Bernice L. McFadden (This Bitter Earth) and Eric Kraft (Inflating a Dog). Bestseller David Baldacci will be joined by elite FBI rescue team member and author Christopher Whitcomb who helped him research his latest thriller. It's Southern Storytellers on the last night of the festival, with Jill McCorkle (Creatures of Habit), Lewis Nordan (Boy with Loaded Gun) and Homer Hickam (Rocket Boys, Sky of Stone). Up and comers abound this year, with first novelists Glen David Gold (Carter Beats the Devil), Brad Barkley (Money, Love) and Trisha Thomas (Nappily Ever After). Rising African American novelists you might recognize include Tracy Price-Thompson (Black Coffee), Kimberla Lawson Roby (It's a Thin Line) and Donna Hemans (River Woman). Also featuring Charlottesville novelist Fred Viebahn (The Stain), new UVa faculty member Christopher Tilghman (Mason's Retreat) along with Maribeth Fischer (The Language of Goodbye), Daniel Jones (After Lucy), Andrea O'Reilly Herrera (The Pearl of the Antilles), Donna Gershten (Kissing the Virgin's Mouth), Michael Parker (Towns Without Rivers) and Judy Goldman (The Slow Way Back).

Nonfiction

New this year is a nonfiction night at the Culbreth, featuring the widely acclaimed science writers Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire) and the Australian Tim Flannery (The Eternal Frontier). Other science notables include Charlottesville resident Jennifer Ackerman (Chance in the House of Fate), Patricia Thomas (Big Shot: Passion, Politics and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine) and Elizabeth Royte (The Tapir's Morning Bath: Mysteries of the Tropical Rainforest). Adventure goes under the sea with elite underwater archaeologist Daniel Lenihan (Submerged) and chronicler of the ocean floor mapping revolution David M. Lawrence (Upheaval from the Abyss). Author and civil rights journalist Roger Wilkins will talk about slavery and the founding fathers. Charles Lewis, Founding Director of the Center for Public Integrity (author of The Cheating of America) and CNN Crossfire co-host Bill Press (Spin This!) join linguist Jeremy Campell (The Liar's Tale) to discuss lying and the state of integrity in America.

Authors Mary Lee Settle (I, Roger Williams), William Lee Miller (Lincoln's Virtues), Eric Seaborg (Adventures in the Atomic Age) and A'Lelia Bundles (The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker) will discuss writing the lives of great figures. Discussing the Jewish experience in America are authors Lawrence Epstein (The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America), Edward Cohen (The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi) and Stella Suberman (The Jew Store). A humor panel with authors Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies), Daryl Dance (Honey, Hush!), Caroline Preston (Jackie by Josie) and Ronda Rich (What Southern Women Know That Every Woman Should). Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and Ben Cheever (Selling Ben Cheever) describe their books and efforts to illuminate working class wages and standards of living. Plus a panel on the power of place with John O'Brien (At Home in the Heart of Appalachia), Deanne Stillman (Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines and the Mohave) and Richard Goodman (French Dirt).

Crime Wave at VABook!

This year, the Festival acknowledges the importance of the mystery genre with its first "Crime Wave at VABook! —an entire day of mystery writings. Crime Wave starts at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 23 and features eight programs at Albemarle County Office building, with panels on biographies of great mystery writers, the "Hard-boiled" novel, women P.I.s, the business of mystery writing, historical mysteries, and forensic evidence. Noted Victorian mystery writer Anne Perry will be interviewed in the morning and forensic thriller writer Jeffery Deaver will be spotlighted in the afternoon. Elizabeth Peters, author of the Amelia Peabody mystery series, (who also writes as Barbara Michaels) will be the guest speaker at a special mystery luncheon at the Metropolitain Restaurant.

Seating for the luncheon is limited, tickets are $45, and can be purchased at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, by calling 924-6890. The Crime Wave programs are free and open to the public. Other writers include: Donna Andews, Frankie Bailey, Jan Burke, Raymond and Wendy DeVere-Austin, Elizabeth Foxwell, Douglas Greene, Peter Heck, Michael Kilian, Kathleen Gregory Klein, Laura Lippman, Miriam Grace Monfredo, Tim Myers, Tom Nolan, George Pelecanos, Andy Straka, Marcia Talley, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, Daniel Shashower and Beth Wright. Booksignings will follow each program.

Youth and Families

The Festival maintains a strong commitment to family and children's literacy with StoryFest at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, five hours of book-related entertainment with storyteller Jim Weiss, illustrators Mary Azarian and Colin Bootman, Noel Hall, Angela Seward, and Susan Cusimano-Love. WHTJ Charlottesville Public Broadcasting Service will present awards to the winners of their Reading Rainbow Young Artists and Illustrators Contest. The winners of the VABook! Poster Contest Winners will be announced by the Altrusa Club. Artists at the McGuffey Arts Center will sponsor printing and bookcraft activities.

The following authors will be making visits to Charlottesville / Albemarle area schools: Mary Azarian, David Baldacci, Colin Bootman, Suzanne Tanner Chitwood, Henry Cole, Maryann Cusimano-Love, Pamela Duncan Edwards, Phil Hoose, Kathy May, Frank Riccio, Angela Seward, Jacquelyn Vawter, Jim Weiss and Susan Wojciechowski. Charlottesville / Albemarle Very Special Arts and Piedmont Council for the Arts is sponsoring the following authors and artists Dee Keith, Judy Longley and Ray Mond L. White.

Publishing Programs

Publisher's Day 2002 has the theme "Publishing and the Internet: Mixing and Maxing Media." "Father of the Quality Paperback" and 2002 National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Jason Epstein will give the Plenary address on the future of electronic publishing is Panels include distance learning, making a web page, on-demand publishing and using the net to increase publicity. Representatives from Xlibris, Fathom.com, Infinity Publishing, BookSUrge.com and the University of Virginia's eText Center will join successful novelists who have used ePublishing to their advantage M. J. Rose, Douglas Clegg. Also, Eric Anderson and Bookreporter.com's Carol Fitzgerald will discuss web pages and opportunities for established and potential authors The conference, to be held at UVa's Newcomb Hall Ballroom and Theater, is $35 per attendee. Call 434-924-6890 for tickets or fax an attendee form available from www.vabook.org/publishers_day.html.

Events designed especially for writers this year include an agents panel with Peter Steinberg and Sandra Martin; a panel with free lance writers Rick Britton, Kara Carden, Gael P. Mustapha and Sandra Gurvis; a panel on book reviewing by noted reviewers Alan Cheuse, Jennifer Howard and Bella Stander; and a panel on turning articles into books with authors Ellen Hoffman, Marc Leepson, Colette Rossant and Deanne Stillman.

Programs Of Special Interest:

Actor to Activist: With Gunsmoke's Dennis Weaver featuring his new memoir All the World's a Stage.

On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding. Journalist and theologian Michael Novak takes a historical look at faith's place in government.

Cookbook authors talk about writing, publishing, and marketing their books:. With Angela Mulloy (Plantation Feasts and Festivities), Tara Seefeldt (The Wicca Cookbook) and Jannequin Bennett (Very Vegetarian).

Is Sex Really Necessary? Must prose be purple to publish? Ask novelists Alexandra Ripley (Scarlett), Ben Cheever (Famous After Death), M.J. Rose (In Fidelity) and Elizabeth Benedict (The Joy of Writing Sex).

Gay literature with authors Bernard Mayes (Escaping God's Closet), Alex Sanchez (Rainbow Boys) and Kirk Read (How I Learned to Snap).

Programs of Local Interest:

Landscapes, Urban and Rural: With photographer George Kousoulas (Washington) and author Minnie Lee McGehee (Mr. Jefferson's River). Slide show.

Lewis & Clark: The Trip Started Here! With a slide show by photographer Sam Abell (Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery). Former mayor Kay Slaughter will discuss plans for the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center of Virginia. Jane Henley, President of the National Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation will discuss the bicentennial commemoration 2003-2007.

Hiking books with authors Jeff Alt (A Walk for Sunshine), Mary and Bill Burnham (Hike America: Virginia) and Su Clauson-Wicker (Inn-to-Inn Walking Guide:Virginia and West Virginia).

 

VABook! 2002, produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, would like especially to thank these generous sponsors:

The City of Charlottesville, The County of Albemarle, The Daily Progress, Wachovia Bank, Pages Magazine, the Virginia Tourism Commission, WHTJ Charlottesville PBS, WINA Radio, the University of Virginia, Dominion Virginia Power, Sprint, Friends of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Harris Teeter, State Farm Insurance, New Dominion Bookshop, Crown Automotive, USAir, AlbemarleKids.com, and WMRA Public Radio.

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