Monday, September 24, 2007

The buzz is building for the Texas Book Festival

From the Austin City Limits Music Festival to SXSW, Austin is known for hosting volumes of festivals throughout the year. Lucky for us, we don’t have to travel very far this Fall as Austin is also home to one of the biggest book festivals in the country, The Texas Book Festival. Established in 1995 by First Lady Laura Bush, the festival’s purpose is to increase awareness of authors and literature and to raise money for Texas public libraries. The Texas Book Festival is held in the state capitol building and offers open sessions to visitors and book signings.

Following the common philosophy that “everything’s bigger in Texas,” the Texas Book Festival is certainly no exception. Visitors from across the country flock to the state’s capitol to rub elbows with the heavyweights of the literary world. Past guests include Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt, The Audacity of Hope author and current presidential candidate Barack Obama, and hundreds of others. This year is sure to be equally as impressive, with featured authors including:

- Monica Brown, author of the upcoming Butterflies on Carmen Street/Mariposas en la Calle Carmen. Brown’s Latino, European and Jewish heritage shines through the novel, with it’s text in both English and Spanish. Brown has written a number of biographies of famous members of the Latino community (Celia Cruz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are examples) aimed at young children.

- Roz Chast, cartoonist whose drawings of the neurotic among us have been appearing in New Yorker Magazine since 1978. Her drawings offer a hint of light-heartedness to the often stuffy magazine. I liked her 2006 collection, Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons.

- David Talbot, author who ushered in online journalism with his founding of Salon.com in 1995. He’s written a book called Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years that sheds light on JFK’s administration and assassination and his brother Robert’s reaction to it all.

- Kristin Gore (Al’s daughter,) Jenna Bush (W’s daughter) and John Leake will also be making appearances.

Mark your calendars: November 3rd & 4th at the State Capitol Building.

Labels: , , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home