November 19, 2004
For Immediate Release
Contact: Kevin McFadden
434-924-6890
kmcfadden@virginia.edu
VABook! 2005 Announces Early Signers
(Charlottesville, VA) — Organizers of the eleventh annual Virginia Festival of the Book (March 16-20, 2005) have announced “Early Signers” committed to participate in the five-day celebration of literacy and literature produced annually in Charlottesville by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
VABook! 2005 will feature free, public readings by Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and The Sunday Philosophy Club; Elinor Lipman, author of The Pursuit of Alice Thrift and The Inn at Lake Devine; Sharyn McCrumb, author of Ghost Riders and the forthcoming St. Dale; Rupert Holmes, author of the novel Where the Truth Lies and the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Esmeralda Santiago, author of The Turkish Lover; and bestselling suspense authors David Baldacci (Hour Game) and Linda Fairstein (Entombed).
Also participating are well-known journalists Bob Edwards, XM Radio host and author of Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism; Jon Meacham, Newsweek managing editor and author of Franklin and Winston, An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; and Joel Achenbach, Washington Post columnist and author of The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac and the Race to the West.
A conference celebrating Walt Whitman (sponsored by the Virginia Quarterly Review) will include Robert Creeley, author of more than 60 books of poetry, and poets David Kirby, Stephen Cushman, and William Logan. Whitman manuscripts will be on display courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Virginia.
Other noted poets to attend the festival include Annie Finch (Calendars), Cathy Hankla (Last Exposures), Barbara Hamby (Babel), E. Ethelbert Miller (How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love), James Reiss (Riff on Six: Selected Poems), Lisa Russ Spaar (Blue Venus) and Dabney Stuart (Family Preserve).
Appearing at StoryFest—the annual youth program sponsored by Motheread® and Fatheread® of Virginia—will be Valerie Tripp, author of many books in the American Girls collection (featuring Molly, Kit, Samantha, Josefina, and Felicity) as well as the Hopscotch Hill School series.
Hosting the annual Authors" Reception will be writing couple Geraldine Brooks (Nine Parts of Desire and the forthcoming Marsh) and Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes). Tickets for the Authors’ Reception are $25 and can be ordered at 434-924-3296.
For more information on VABook!, visit the festival website www.vabook.org.
-- End Release --
Join our email list to stay informed about developments and events
