Boston Book Festival!!!

Ready for the event of the year?
Come on out and enjoy some great authors and books. You can use the day as a festival Culture Vulture or Extra Credit.

Full Schedule:
http://www.bostonbookfest.org/2010_schedule


Here are my choice selections:

CARTOONS (artsy)

10:00am Trinity Church Forum 206 Clarendon Street

Test your cartooning and doodling skills with this team of four successful and talented cartoonists/illustrators. Jarrett Krosoczka talks about his bestselling Lunch Lady graphic novel series about a super-heroine lunch lady serving up a side of justice while Alexis Frederick-Frost provides us with some Adventures in Cartooning. Aaron Renier, author of the action-packed The Unsinkable Walker Bean and Jef Czekaj the creator of Hip & Hop, Don’t Stop, join the party. Hosted by Brookline Public Library’s Robin Brenner.

OPEN MIC (share your stories)

10:30am Cloud Place 647 Boylston Street

Here’s your chance to show off your writing skills by reading your work to an eager audience and any guest authors, editors or literary agents who drop by. What makes this particular open mic extra special (and unforgettable!) is that it will be hosted by author Steve Almond, who is known for giving excellent readings.  Steve will be on hand to talk about what makes a good reading – from how to pick the right excerpt to how to perform that excerpt like a professional. To participate, please bring a FIVE-MINUTE excerpt of your fiction, poetry or non-fiction to the session and sign up for a reading slot when you arrive. Please note that a five-minute reading usually consists of no more than 600 words. We will hold readers to a very strict five-minute limit. Presented by Grub Street.


BASEBALL (sports)

11:00am Trinity Church Forum 206 Clarendon Street

As Bill Littlefield so often reminds us, it IS only a game. But sometimes baseball feels like so much more, especially when we consider the legends who have claimed our hearts as well as a place in the record books. Bill chats with Howard Bryant, author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, James Hirsch, author of Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, and Andy Wasif, author of Red Sox University, on writing about America’s favorite pastime. Sponsored by Hotel Commonwealth.

MOVIES (famous folks)

1:30pm John Hancock Hall at the Back Bay Events Center 180 Berkeley Street

What’s it like to see your words, characters and ideas translated to the screen? Do you get a say in who plays the lead? Is being on-scene fascinating or infuriating or somewhere in between? Find out from Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island), A. M. Homes  (Jack, The Safety of Objects) and Tom Perrotta (Election, Little Children), seasoned veterans of the transition from page to screen. Hosted by Boston Globe movie critic Ty Burr. Sponsored by The Boston Globe.


WHAT MEANS SWITCH (famous folks)

12:00pm Old South Church Sanctuary 645 Boylston Street

Identity, the march of world events, and the effort to construct a life are explored in this session. Gish Jen’s World and Town is set in a small New England town, but raises questions about the wider world and the changes it brings. In Simon Mawer’s Booker-nominated novel The Glass Room, lives are ripped apart by war. Michelle Hoover’s The Quickening is a portrait of the lives of two Depression-era farm women. Hosted by founding editor of The Drum, Henriette Lazaridis Power. Sponsored by Other Press.

TRAVEL (very funny)

3:00pm John Hancock Hall at the Back Bay Events Center 180 Berkeley Street

Two unusually perceptive authors will transport you in this entertaining and enlightening session. Travel writer Bill Bryson (At Home) goes deep into the place we think we know best: home. Tony Hiss (In Motion) explores the hidden dimension of what he calls “deep travel.” Hosted by the Robin Young of WBUR’s Here and Now. Sponsored by Google.

TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES (painful like your ROAR books)
4:00pm Church of the Covenant 67 Newbury Street

Traumatic experiences have an insidious way of doing damage. Jessica Stern, an authority on terrorism, discusses Denial, her account of being sexually assaulted as a teenager and the equally traumatic aftermath. Dr. John Rich, author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time gives his perspective on young African American men traumatized by violence. Myla Goldberg, author of the bestseller The Bee Season, discusses her use of a traumatic event in her new novel, The False Friend. Moderated by journalist Stefanie Friedhoff.