November 19, 2003
For Immediate Release
Contact: Kevin McFadden
434-924-6890
kmcfadden@virginia.edu
VABook! Announces Early Signers for 2004 Festival
(Charlottesville, VA, Nov.19, 2003) . . . Organizers of the tenth annual Virginia Festival of the Book (March 24- 28, 2004) have announced the “Early Signers” committed to participate in the five-day celebration of literacy and literature produced annually in Charlottesville by the Virginia Center for the Book at Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
VABook! 2004 will feature Booker Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje (author of The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost) and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) in headline events co-sponsored by the University of Virginia and the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Headline programming will include an evening with the Fellowship of Southern Writers (including Kaye Gibbons, Clyde Edgerton, Richard and Robert Bausch, Henry Taylor, Fred Chappell, and George Garrett); a program on the writers of the Literary West (including Gretel Ehrlich, Judy Blunt, and Dan O’Brien); and panels on the legacy of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
Other attending authors winning current critical acclaim are the 1999 National Book Critics' Circle Award winner Henry Wiencek (An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America) and 2003 National Book Award fiction nominee Edward P. Jones (The Known World).
Mystery and suspense fans should mark Saturday, March 27 on their calendars: novelists Lawrence Block (Small Town, Coward’s Kiss), S. J. Rozan (Winter and Night), T. Jefferson Parker (Cold Pursuit) and a host of other mystery writers participate in the third annual Crime Wave at VABook!. Author David Baldacci (Split Second) will host the Crime Wave luncheon at noon on March 27. Crime Wave luncheon tickets are $35 per person; a limited number of tickets are available, call 434-924-6890.
Other distinguished participants: Michael Dirda, Alexander McCall Smith, Christopher Lear, Stephen McCauley, Amitai Etzioni, Alev Lytle Croutier, James Goldgeier, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Arturo Arias, Peter Balakian and Stephen Schlesinger.
Authors Henry Wiencek and Donna Lucey (I Dwell in Possibility) will join novelists John Gregory Brown (Audubon’s Watch) and Carrie Brown (The House on Belle Isle) in hosting the annual Authors Reception, Saturday, March 27 at Carr’s Hill, at the home of the President of the University of Virginia. Tickets to the gala Authors Reception are available for $25 each; call the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (434) 924-3296.
A more comprehensive preliminary listing of scheduled authors, with monthly updates, is available on the VABook! website (www.vabook.org) in the “Participants” section. Call (434) 924-6890 for additional information.
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