Hecho en Tejas: A Celebration of Texas Mexican Literature

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: House Chamber

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and Dagoberto Gilb are being honored for their  contributions to Texas literature, the master accordion player Santiago Jimenez, Jr. is playing, and Hinojosa-Smith and Gilb will read from Gilb's groundbreaking anthology, Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature, as will Diana López and Macarena Hernández.


Authors: Diana López
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
Macarena Hernández
Dagoberto Gilb
Emceed By: Jan Hughes

Michael Connelly

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:00 - 12:45
Location: House Chamber

The Overlook, Michael Connelly's 19th book and the latest in his bestselling Harry Bosch series, was originally serialized in the New York Times magazine. "I think the original story in the Times had a lot of velocity," Connelly has said, "but I think it has more of it in what I call the final version."

The Overlook opens as a body has been found on the overlook near Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. As soon as LAPD detective Bosch begins retracing the victim's steps, contradictions emerge. What begins as a routine homicide investigation opens up before Bosch into something much larger and more dangerous - and much more urgent.





Authors: Michael Connelly
Introduction By: Mary Gay Shipley

Joseph J. Ellis

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:00 - 1:45
Location: House Chamber

The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, but as the Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis (Founding Brothers) makes clear in his new book American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, the founders' failures are just as revealing of the American character as their achievements. The institution of slavery was left intact, for example, but part of what made the American Revolution so notable is that it was achieved by a group of now iconic leaders rather than a single individual. Ellis' incisive and ironic examination of America's founding is a brilliant delineation of a time of flawed greatness in American history.


Authors: Joseph J. Ellis
Introduction By: Douglas Brinkley

Tom Perrotta

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:00 - 2:45
Location: House Chamber

Tom Perrotta's novel Little Children, which he adapted into the movie starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, compelled the New York Times Book Review to call him an "American Chekhov whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura." In this session, he'll talk about his new novel The Abstinence Teacher, which Publishers Weekly says is  "rifewith Perrotta's subtle and satiric humor."Perrotta will also be at a screening of Little Children at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz (320 E. 6th St.) at 7pm on Saturday, November 3rd; tickets are available through the Alamo Drafthouse box office. 

Authors: Tom Perrotta
Introduction By: John Pierson

The American Empire

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:00 - 4:00
Location: House Chamber

Whether America deserves its unique position as the world's premier superpower - and how it has maintained that position - are topics that citizens of other nations have pondered for some time. Now, however, Americans on both sides of the political aisle seem fraught with questions that haven't always been part of the national discourse: Is America in decline? Could China, India, or the EU topple America's place in the world? Is America an inspiration to other countries or a bullying threat to global stability? We've invited Vanity Fair editor at large Cullen Murphy (Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America); ancient historian and novelist Steven Saylor (Roma: A Novel); Yale law professor Amy Chua (Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall); and Wall Street Journal reporter Steve LeVine (The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea) to shed some light on the question of America's place in the world, and what that question means to Americans' lives. David Patterson, senior editor at Henry Holt & Company, moderates.



Authors: Steven Saylor
Cullen Murphy
Steve LeVine
Amy Chua
Moderated By: David Patterson

Kristin Gore

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 10:45
Location: Senate Chamber

Featuring the same beloved heroine as her debut novel (Sammy's Hill), Kristin Gore's new novel Sammy's House stands on its own as a hilarious behind-the-scenes look at people at the highest level or power. "Sammy" is Samantha Joyce, an idealistic young health-care advisor to the new administration. Immersed in her dream job and reveling in her romance with Washington Post reporter Charlie Lawton, Sammy's life is finally making sense. But soon after the administration takes office, a mysterious informant begins to leak damaging information on a popular blog. Evidence of a secret deal with an Indian pharmaceutical company points directly to the Oval Office as rumors swirl that the teetotaling President has fallen off the wagon.

Gore has written for several TV shows, including Futurama and Saturday Night Live, for which she received an Emmy nomination and a Writer's Guild Award.


Authors: Kristin Gore
Introduction By: Amanda Eyre Ward

Lynne Cheney

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:00 - 11:45
Location: Senate Chamber

Home to the Wonder Bar, the Rialto Theater, and Lloyd's Confectionary, Casper was like many small towns in the 1940s - except it sat on mile-high Wyoming prairie stretching on as far as the eye could see. In this place so full of the sense of possibility, Lynne Cheney grew up listening to Queen for a Day on her family's Zenith radio, playing Wonder Woman with her friends, and dreaming at night that she could fly, soaring upward into the endless blue sky.

In Blue Skies, No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family, Cheney describes a town where little girls wore dresses, but still played rough-and-tumble games and where insightful, caring teachers knew what the children in their classes were capable of and refused to let them fall short. She recalls the resolute women in her family - in particular, her mother - who was determined that there would be no limits on her daughter's aspirations. And she recounts her courtship with one of the local daredevils who grew up to be the man she would marry.

Drawing on a wealth of sources, Cheney interweaves in her memoir the stories of westward-moving men and women - Puritans and Mormons, Germans and Scots Irish - whose journeys brought her family and the vice president's to the high Wyoming plains. Blue Skies, No Fences recalls an era of immense appeal and sets it within the sweep of American history, reminding us that our lives are intertwined, not only with those who share our years, but with others who lived before us.


Authors: Lynne V. Cheney
Introduction By: Margaret Spellings

The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:00 - 12:45
Location: Senate Chamber

Atlantic Monthly editor Robert Vare editor-at-large and former managing editor Cullen Murphy will be at this session to talk about The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly. The anthology brings together 78 of the magazine's most acclaimed and influential articles, including "Letter from Birmingham Jail," by Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the 20th century's most famous reflections upon - and calls for - racial equality; "Broken Windows," by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which gave birth to a new way of thinking about law enforcement; "The Roots of Muslim Rage," by Bernard Lewis, which prophetically warned of the dangers posed to the West by rising Islamic extremism; and "The Fifty-First State," by James Fallows, which previewed in astonishing detail the mess in which America would find itself in Iraq - a full six months before the invasion.

In The Atlantic's very first issue, in 1857, the magazine's founders - an illustrious group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell - declared that they would dedicate their new publication to monitoring the development, and advancing the cause, of what they called "the American idea." And for the last century and a half, the magazine has been preoccupied with the fundamental subjects of the American experience: war and peace, science and religion, the conundrum of race, the role of women, the plight of the cities, the struggle to preserve the environment, the strengths and failings of our politics, and especially, America's proper place in the world.

Authors: Robert Vare
Cullen Murphy
Moderated By: Steven Isenberg

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:00 - 1:45
Location: Senate Chamber

There have been a number of partisan books about the presidency of George W. Bush, but penetrating the secrecy that surrounds the Bush White House has proven to be a challenge for the Washington press corps. Robert Draper, a Texan who wrote the first major magazine profile of Bush when he was still governor of Texas in 1998, has accomplished that feat, gaining unprecedented access to the President and all of the key members of his administration, including six one-on-one interviews with President Bush. The result of all that shoe-leather reporting is a rollicking new book, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, that captures the full scope of the Bush White House with an intimacy that will surprise readers, regardless of their reactions to President Bush.


Authors: Robert Draper
Introduction By: Carol Dawson

Kay Bailey Hutchison

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:00 - 2:45
Location: Senate Chamber

 In a series of biographical portraits and historical overviews, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers tells the stories of dedicated American women from all walks of life who broke down the barriers to once-forbidden territory: boardrooms, operating rooms, courtrooms, newsrooms, and the halls of Congress. The collection includes such trailblazers as Gerty Cori, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in science, along with better known figures such as Rosa Parks and a number of first ladies.

Authors: Kay Bailey Hutchison
Introduction By: Vincent Salas

That Seventies Panel

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:00 - 4:00
Location: Senate Chamber

Don't ask why the Texas Book Festival is doing a panel on the Seventies. The question is: How could the Texas Book Festival not do a panel on the Seventies? We've titled it after a syndicated TV show dripping with in-the-know irony, but the Seventies are a more complex recollection than that show indicates. These three writers' latest books take humorous, trenchant, and gimlet-eyed views of that smiley-face decade; we've brought them together for a conversation about all things funny and serious about that now innocent-seeming decade.


Authors: Maxine Swann
Margaret Sartor
Norris Church Mailer
Moderated By: Sarah Bird

Afghanistan: The Forgotten War

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: The Sanctuary (1201 Lavaca, enter from Lavaca St.)

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan seems to many people to now be "a dim and distant war," as the Washington Post recently put it. But after five-and-a-half years, some 26,000 U.S. troops still remain there. Brandon Friedman and Marcus Luttrell are two Texans who served in Afghanistan - Friedman in the 101st Airborne Division and Luttrell as a Navy Seal - and they both have written books about their time there. Military historian and literary agent Jim Hornfischer will talk to them about their books and their experiences.


Authors: Brandon Friedman
Marcus Luttrell
Moderated By: Jim Hornfischer

A Tribute to Molly Ivins

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:15 - 12:15
Location: The Sanctuary (1201 Lavaca, enter from Lavaca St.)

We pay tribute here to Molly Ivins, who died earlier this year and was one of the nation's most iconic political commentators and humorists. At this session, we'll hear from Lou Dubose, Ivins' frequent co-author (their new book is titled Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights); humorist Roy Blount, Jr.; and noted documentary filmmaker Paul Stekler will screen never-before-seen footage of Ivins that appears in Remembering Molly Ivins, a short film he recently made.  

Ivins' friend Ellen Sweets will also speak about Ivins - Sweets recently retired as a food writer with the Denver Post, but met Ivins shortly after moving to Dallas to become a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Their friendship was built around an interest in progressive politics; French, Mexican, Italian, Greek, African, and Southern food; dinner parties, movies, lots of laughter and, of course, some sadness. 

Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau Chief Richard Dunham moderates.  

Authors: Lou Dubose
Roy Blount, Jr.
Moderated By: Richard Dunham

What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 2:30
Location: The Sanctuary (1201 Lavaca, enter from Lavaca St.)

Since the Iraq war began in 2003, roughly one million young Americans have rotated through the country's insurgent-infested hot spots. And though media reports about the war are constant, accounts of what it is like to be fighting in Iraq are usually sketchy. Investigative journalist Trish Wood's What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It is gritty, authentic, and uncensored. The accounts of three Texas soldiers - Paul Rodriquez and Matthew and Toby Winn - are included in the book; they will be joining Wood at this session.


Authors: Trish Wood
Moderated By: Trish Wood

The Onion Presents: Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:00 - 4:00
Location: The Sanctuary (1201 Lavaca, enter from Lavaca St.)

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of The Planet Earth, 73rd Edition, features incorrect statistics on all of the Earth's 168, 182, or 196 independent nations. It also features maps, including a fold-out world map at actual size. Readers will learn about every country from Afghanistan, "Allah's Cat Box," to the Ukraine, "The Bridebasket of Europe."

Today's news-parody consumer cannot possibly understand made-up current events without the context of fake world history and geography. That is why The Onion is publishing a world atlas: to help us.

Our Dumb World is an invaluable tool for any reader interested in overthrowing a weakened government in East Asia, exploiting a developing nation in Africa, or for directions to tonight's party at Erica's. It is a reference guide to 250,000 of the world's most important places, such as North Korea's Trench of Victory, the Great Human Pyramid of Egypt, and Saudi Arabia's superhighway, the Mohammedobahn.


Authors: The Onion
Emceed By: Sarah Hepola

Where Are You From?: Sense of Place in Kid's Books

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:30 - 11:30
Location: Family Life Center (1300 Lavaca)

Vibrant characters draw us into books and keep us up at night reading them, sometimes past our bedtimes. But some authors have the power to make setting as palpable as character - and then we readers get to live inside the story world. We've got four of the country's beloved authors at this session talking about their latest books and how they transport us to the worlds their characters inhabit.

 

 

 

Authors: Deborah Wiles
Adam Rex
Kimberly Willis Holt
Michael Hoeye
Moderated By: Jennifer Brown

Crossing Cultures

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:00 - 1:00
Location: Family Life Center (1300 Lavaca)

Beloved children's authors Linda Sue Park and
René Saldaña Jr. will present their latest books and talk about what it's like to write books for a general audience about the cultures in which they grew up.

Authors: René Saldaña Jr.
Linda Sue Park
Moderated By: Jennifer Brown

Rick Riordan

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 2:15
Location: Family Life Center (1300 Lavaca)

Rick Riordan's latest entry in his myth-tinged bestselling series Percy Jackson and the Olympians has been called "a winner of Olympic proportions"; the adventures of Percy and his array of often clashing pals have to find Annabeth (the daughter of Athena) as well as Artemis, not to mention deal with the all-consuming prophecy of the Oracle. Riordan will be giving the world premiere reading from the yet-to-be-released fourth entry in the Percy Jackson series at this event!  


Authors: Rick Riordan
Introduction By: Topher Bradfield

Gail Carson Levine

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:30 - 3:15
Location: Family Life Center (1300 Lavaca)

In Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand, Gail Carson Levine's thrilling sequel to Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, the Never fairies find themselves fighting against the greatest danger of all - their own hearts' desires - to save their beloved Fairy Haven. Rani, Tinker Bell, and the fairy queen, Clarion, set out on a perilous quest that takes them across an ocean, to the palace of the Great Wanded Fairies. At last they acquire a wand, only to find that their troubles are just beginning. For a wand can easily tempt a fairy into making a foolish wish, with terrible consequences.

When Gail Carson Levine was little, she loved to act out fairy tales, and she often made pretend magic wands out of sticks. Back then, she had no idea a wand could have a heart or a mind or that she'd ever write a book about one!


Authors: Gail Carson Levine
Introduction By: Joanna Nigrelli

Marlee Matlin

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:30 - 4:15
Location: Family Life Center (1300 Lavaca)

Megan's fourth-grade class is putting on their own original musical based on the book The Wizard of Oz, and Megan wants to be the star of the show and play Dorothy. Since she's deaf, she will sign the songs for her audition. However, a problem develops when Lizzie, her best friend from camp, transfers from her all-deaf school to Megan's class - and signs the same two songs that Megan was going to do! Luckily, Megan has some other ideas up her sleeve...

Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin follows Deaf Child Crossing and Nobody's Perfect with this winning story that perfectly captures the humor, joys, and frustration of childhood friendships.


Authors: Marlee Matlin
Introduction By: Gillian Redfearn

Vintage/Anchor Books Presents: Writers on Reading

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Auditorium Room E1.004

Writers on Reading is a special event presented by Vintage/Anchor Books featuring Jane Hamilton and Valerie Martin. The event is not like a regular reading; it's an intimate seminar for readers interested in reading groups. Hamilton and Martin will talk about reading and writing, or more specifically what they personally read, how they decide what to read and how they write. Vintage/Anchor Books will be handing out special tote bags with complimentary new Vintage/Anchor paperbacks at the event. The session's moderator, Russell Perreault, is the director of publicity for Vintage and Anchor Books.

Vintage Books was founded in 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf as a trade paperback home for its authors. Its publishing list includes a wide range, from the most influential works of world literature to cutting-edge contemporary fiction and distinguished non-fiction. With a list that includes such writers as William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Raymond Chandler, William Styron, A.S. Byatt, Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy, Alice Munro, V. S. Naipaul, Haruki Murakami, David Guterson, and Richard Russo, it is today's foremost trade paperback publisher.

Anchor Books is the oldest trade paperback publisher in America. It was founded in 1953 by Jason Epstein with the goal of making inexpensive editions of modern classics widely available to college students and the adult reading public. Today, Anchor's list boasts award-winning history, science, women's studies, sociology, and quality fiction. Authors published by Anchor Books include Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Thomas Friedman, Natalie Angier, Thomas Cahill, Jon Krakauer, Karen Armstrong, Chinua Achebe and Jane Smiley. Vintage and Anchor Books are divisions of Random House, Inc.


Authors: Valerie Martin
Jane Hamilton
Moderated By: Russell Perreault

Joe Ely performs Bonfire of Roadmaps

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:00 - 2:45
Location: Capitol Auditorium Room E1.004

Since he first hitched a ride out of Lubbock at the age of 16, singer-songwriter and Flatlanders band member Joe Ely has been a road warrior, traveling highways and back roads across America and Europe, playing music for "2 hours of ecstasy" for every "22 hours of misery." To stay sane on the road, Ely keeps a journal, penning verses that sometimes morph into songs, and other times remain "snapshots of what was flying by, just out of reach, so to savor at a later date when the wheels stop rolling, and the gears quit grinding, and the engines shut down." In Bonfire of Roadmaps, Ely takes readers on the road with him, and in this performance, he'll be performing from the book.


Authors: Joe Ely

George Saunders

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:30 - 4:15
Location: Capitol Auditorium Room E1.004

George Saunders has been celebrated for his imaginative, sharply observant, hilarious fiction. But in The Braindead Megaphone, his first collection of essays, Saunders trains his lens on the real world, and shows that it, too, is brimming with wonderful, marvelous strangeness - in the surreal opulence of Dubai, in the mind-bending self-denial of the Buddha Boy of Nepal, and in the seemingly mundane transactions of everyday American life. In the face of a political and cultural reality saturated with lazy media, false promises, and political doublespeak, Saunders invokes the wisdom of American literary heroes such as Twain and Vonnegut. Wielding sharp and incisive humor, Saunders transforms a world that is absurd and sometimes cruel into something more knowable, and ultimately workable.


Authors: George Saunders
Moderated By: James Magnuson

Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 10:45
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010

Revered by Americans across the political spectrum, Barbara Jordan was "the most outspoken moral voice of the American political system," in the words of former President Bill Clinton, who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Throughout her career as a Texas senator, U.S. congresswoman, and distinguished professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Jordan lived by a simple creed: "Ethical behavior means being honest, telling the truth, and doing what you said you were going to do."

Max Sherman, the former dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, was Jordan's friend and colleague for 25 years, first in the Texas Senate and later at the LBJ School. In Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder, Sherman has assembled several of Jordan's major political speeches; the book also comes with a DVD of Jordan giving her speeches and testifying before Congress and he will screen clips from the DVD at this session.


Authors: Max Sherman
Introduction By: Anne Wheeler

The Portable Obituary: How the Famous, Rich, and Powerful Really Died

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:00 - 12:45
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010

Michael Largo's The Portable Obituary: How the Famous, Rich, and Powerful Really Died is the definitive source book for the true causes of celebrity death - presenting unique, meaningful, and original obituaries. There is no other work that reviews the lives of the prominent, illustrious, and legendary from the cause-of-death vantage point.

Organized alphabetically, The Portable Obituary examines revealing details about how famous persons' deeds, intimate habits, and lifestyles - good and bad - ultimately influenced the ways in which they died and determined their roles in history and culture.

Writer, raconteur and former First Grade Valentine Queen Mary Gordon Spence has practiced dying on many occasions, so she's the perfect person to introduce Michael Largo. Spence writes a regular column (on an irregular basis) for the Austin American Statesman and provides regular commentary (on an irregular basis) for KUT, Austin's public radio station. Her book, Finding Magic in the Mundane, was released in 2005. 

Authors: Michael Largo
Introduction By: Mary Gordon Spence

Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 2:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010

Clayton Williams Jr. has repeatedly been on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthist Americans, yet more than once he has also been on the verge of bankruptcy, in stratospheric debt. The native son of a distinguished West Texas family, his career and pursuits have ranged from farmer to insurance salesman to wildcatter, pipeline entrepreneur, rancher, banker, real estate mogul, big game hunter, conservationist, philanthropist, gubernatorial candidate, and oil tycoon, Williams is by all measures one of a kind.

Mike Cochran's Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter is the candid, comprehensive, fast-paced, and insightful account of one of the state's most distinctive mavericks.


Authors: Mike Cochran
Introduction By: Richard Dunham

Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans & Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 10:45
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.012

Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans & Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America, by iconoclastic Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez, a journalist who is "decisively changing the understanding of Latino experience in the United States" according to The Economist, is a provocative book about how the mestizo legacy of Mexican-Americans will forever change how Americans think about race and ethnicity.

Rodriguez brilliantly argues that Mexican Americans are rendering census race data absurd and will force all Americans to rethink our notions of race. The Mexicanization of America, he argues, will transform the U.S. into a true mestizo culture and broaden our belief in the melting pot.


Authors: Gregory Rodriguez
Introduction By: Gus Gonzales

Getting Even: The Literature of Revenge

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:00 - 12:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.012

As anyone who's practiced it knows, revenge can be tricky. Writing fiction is one way to realize acts we wouldn't perform in reality, but the benefits of that catharsis don't extend just to the writer: reading about revenge can often be the most thrilling kind of reading there is. Thriller writer Jeff Abbott's job is to craft gripping narratives, but the literary fiction that Bud Shrake and Christopher Kelly have recently published is also enthralling. It's one thing to write fiction about revenge and another to write a memoir about wrestling with the vengeful Old Testament God, as Shalom Auslander does in his new memoir Foreskin's Lament. As Festival author Tom Perrotta puts it, "God may be a bit irritated by this book, but I loved it."

Authors: Bud Shrake
Christopher Kelly
Shalom Auslander
Jeff Abbott
Moderated By: Karen Olsson

Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:30 - 1:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.012

During her lifetime Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave, lumberjack, laundress, raid leader, nurse, fund-raiser, cook, intelligence gatherer, Underground Railroad organizer, and abolitionist. She was known both as Moses and as General Tubman.

In Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life, Beverly Lowry goes beyond the familiar tales to create a portrait of Tubman in lively imagined vignettes that, as Lowry writes, "catch her on the fly" and portray her life as she herself might have presented it.

Authors: Beverly Lowry
Introduction By: Cynthia Bryant

Bad vs. Worse: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lose-Lose Decisions

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 2:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.012

Bad vs. Worse: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lose-Lose Decisions is the pinnacle of lose-lose decision making, courtesy of Joshua Piven, the bestselling author of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. In Bad vs. Worse, the reader is presented with a series of impossible choices as well as facts, figures, stats, and tips you need to make a decision when the only choices are worse or "worser."

For example, which would be worse to notice on your dentist's hand: flesh-eating bacteria or leprosy? Which would be worse: visiting North Korea with Geraldo Rivera or getting trapped among the Donners with Joan Rivers? Piven will provide insight into these perplexing questions at this session.


Authors: Joshua Piven
Moderated By: Will Clarke

Lit Crit: The State of Book Criticism

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:00 - 4:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.012

The amount of editorial space (and broadcast time) devoted to coverage of books and writers - and cultural reporting and criticism in general - always seems to be under threat. It's understood that breaking news trumps arts coverage, but with the layoff earlier this year of the respected book editor from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the publishing industry reacted with more fear than usual about the declining coverage of books in mainstream media. What kinds of books are getting reviewed now? How is the book industry adapting to that coverage? Are informed and well-written reviews only showing up on blogs and boutique literary journals? These panelists, all insiders in the literary scene, will talk about what's at stake in current literary criticism and whether the scene is all gloom-and-doom.

Jerome Weeks has been a professional book and theater critic for 20 years, notably with The Dallas Morning News. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, American Theatre, Men's Vogue and on NPR. He currently blogs for Artsjournal.com as book/daddy.


Authors: Edward Nawotka
Steven G. Kellman
Jessa Crispin
Alan Cheuse
Moderated By: Jerome Weeks

Father Knows Worst

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014

Sometimes father just doesn't know best. Fiction writers Dominic Smith and Alan Cheuse join Robert Wilder (Daddy Needs a Drink: An Irreverent Look at Parenting from a Dad Who Truly Loves His Kids - Even When They're Driving Him Nuts) for a conversation about fatherhood.

Moderator Clay Nichols is a playwright, freelance writer and co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts. He is also the writer/producer/co-host of the Due Dads DVD series for expecting fathers. Nichols has an MFA from the University of Texas where he was a Michener Fellow. A father of three, he's missing soccer games to moderate this panel.

Authors: Robert Wilder
Dominic Smith
Alan Cheuse
Moderated By: Clay Nichols

Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:30 - 12:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014

West Point is a world away from Yale, where Elizabeth Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women training to fight a war. In Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, Samet beautifully chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed her relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them - the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J.M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom.


Authors: Elizabeth Samet
Introduction By: Dave Shaw

Judith Thurman

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:30 - 1:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014

Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman's celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women's work" - from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontes, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence.
 
Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra's Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.

Moderator Mimi Swartz, author, with Sherron Watkins, of Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, is an executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Talk, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times Op Ed page and Sunday magazine.

Authors: Judith Thurman
Moderated By: Mimi Swartz

The Age of Lincoln

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.016

Two distinguished historians will talk about their new books on Abraham Lincoln at this session:

How did Abraham Lincoln, long held as a paragon of presidential bravery and principled politics, find his way to the White House? How did he become this one man great enough to risk the fate of the nation on the well-worn but cast-off notion that all men are created equal? Award-winning historian John C. Waugh's One Man Great Enough: Abraham Lincoln's Road to the Civil War takes us from Lincoln's first public rejection of slavery to his secret arrival in the capital, from his stunning debates with Stephen Douglas to his contemplative moments considering the state of the country he loved.

Orville Vernon Burton's The Age of Lincoln is a fiercely original history of the five decades that pivoted around the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Abolishing slavery, the age's most extraordinary accomplishment, was not its most profound. The enduring legacy of the age was inscribing personal liberty into the nation's millennial aspirations. In a remarkable reappraisal of Lincoln, Burton shows how the president's Southernness empowered him to conduct a civil war that redefined freedom as a personal right protected by the rule of law. In the violent decades that followed, the extent of that freedom would be contested by racism and unregulated capitalism, but not its central place in what defined the country.

Moderator W.K. Stratton is the author of two books, Backyard Brawl and Chasing the Rodeo, and co-editor of Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader.  He also has written for several magazines, including GQ and Sports Illustrated.

Authors: John C. Waugh
Orville Vernon Burton
Moderated By: W.K. Stratton

Cuba, Then and Now

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:30 - 12:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.016

Two writers who have published provocative books this year about Cuba will speak at this session:

Alfredo José Estrada's Havana: Autobiography of a City takes readers from the Plaza de Armas, the tree-lined square where Havana was founded by conquistadors in 1519, to the Malecón, the elegant boulevard along the shore where Fidel Castro rode a Russian tank in triumph. Estrada portrays the adventurers and dreamers who left their mark on Havana, including Jos Martí, martyr for Cuban independence; and Ernest Hemingway, the most American of writers who became an unabashed Habanero. The book is a deeply personal account of a love affair with a city, as well as an entertaining portrait of a place not easily forgotten.

Francisco José Moreno grew up before Fidel Castro seized power, when Cuba was an ebullient and chaotic society in a permanent state of turmoil, combining a raucous tropical nature with the evils of arbitrary and corrupt government. Yet this fascinating period in Cuban history has been largely forgotten or misrepresented, even though it set the stage for Castro's dramatic takeover in 1959. To reclaim the Cuba that he knew - and add color and detail to the historical record - in Before Fidel: The Cuba I Remember, distinguished political scientist Francisco José Moreno offers his recollections of the Cuba in which he came of age personally and politically.

Robin Moore has received awards including fellowships from the Rockfeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. His written work includes Nationalizing Blackness:  Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 and articles on Cuban music in the Latin American Music Review, Cuban Studies, Ethnomusicology, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, and other journals and book anthologies. His newest book, Music and Revolution, concerns artistic life in Cuba after 1959.

 

 

Authors: Francisco José Moreno
Alfredo José Estrada
Moderated By: Robin Moore

Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:00 - 1:45
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.016

Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future takes readers inside the global race to build the car of the future, as pioneers in Japan, India, China, and the USA tackle the challenge of creating automobiles that will run on cleaner energy sources. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran succinctly writes: "Oil is the problem. Cars are the solution." We are living in the midst of a Great Awakening in which environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and political leaders are forming new alliances to end our addiction to oil and create new technologies. The days of Big Oil and Big Auto are numbered, according to the authors, who show how we are in the midst of a major transformation from carbon-based energy sources to new fuels and technologies.

With wide-ranging analysis and a keen view of the key players in the intersecting worlds of energy and automobiles, Vijay Vaitheeswaran tells the story of what may be the most important challenge facing the industrial world: How to make the transition from the Age of Petroleum to a cleaner and better future.

Authors: Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
Introduction By: Nettie Hartsock

True Crime: Death Becomes You

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:30 - 3:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.016

Plane-hopping serial killers, conniving spouses, phony, murderous doctors: this panel has it all. True crime is a thrill to read, but crafting a narrative that doesn't get bogged down in the legal minutiae of the courtroom and tracking down victims or perpetrators who may not want to talk are easier said than done - these three writers will be talking about the stories behind the thrilling books they've recently published.

Four-time Pulitzer nominee and former investigative reporter Hugh Aynesworth moderates.

Authors: John Leake
Diane Fanning
Kathryn Casey
Moderated By: Hugh Aynesworth

Character-Driven Fiction

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Plot, schmlot - characters keep us turning pages just as breathlessly as a thrilling plot can. We've assembled four writers respected for the depth and vibrancy of their characters at this panel.

Moderator Edward Nawotka is a columnist for Bloomberg News and covers the South for Publishers Weekly. He lives in Houston.

Authors: Claude Stanush
Shelby Hearon
Masha Hamilton
Owen Egerton
Moderated By: Edward Nawotka

Religious Freedom & the Constitution

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:30 - 12:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, UT School of Law dean Lawrence Sager argues in Religious Freedom and the Constituion, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state.

That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, Sager offers an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty.

Introducer Tim Herman is a partner in law firm Herman Howry & Breen in Austin. In 2006, he was named the Distinguished Lawyer in Austin.

Authors: Lawrence Sager
Introduction By: Tim Herman

John Phillip Santos

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:30 - 1:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Long before John Phillip Santos was an award-winning documentary filmmaker, before he was a celebrated memoirist, he was a poet - the recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Prize at Notre Dame, among other awards, including his status as the first-ever Mexican American Rhodes Scholar. Years came and went, and Santos' poetry slowly evolved sans benefit of publication in book form. In Songs Older Than Any Known Singer - his first book of poems - Santos delves into the same mythic space that produced his 1999 memoir, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation, a finalist for the National Book Award.


Authors: John Phillip Santos
Introduction By: Mary Margaret Farabee

Texas Jazz Mavericks

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 2:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Jazz is one of America's greatest gifts to the arts, and native Texas musicians have played a major role in the development of jazz from its birth in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie to its most contemporary manifestation in free jazz. Dave Oliphant began the fascinating story of Texans and jazz in his acclaimed book Texan Jazz, published in 1996. Continuing his riff on this intriguing musical theme, Oliphant uncovers in this new volume more of the prolific connections between Texas musicians and jazz.


Authors: Dave Oliphant
Moderated By: Jay Trachtenberg

Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:30 - 3:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

Mark J. Penn, the man who identified "soccer moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and one of Hillary Clinton's chief campaign advisors, is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture that are wielding large influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, can create a microtrend capable of launching a business or a social movement.

Relying on some of the best polling data available, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and business that are changing our lives. Among them are: single women choosing to buy their own homes; the triumph of individual sports over team sports; the growing influence of Protestant Latinos; extreme commuters; Philo-Semites; and Classical Music Dads, older fathers who are spending more and more money on their children.

Penn shows readers how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise or spark a movement. His book makes a convincing case that small groups can have a big impact.


Authors: Mark J. Penn
Introduction By: Esmond Harmsworth

Tales from the Teachers' Lounge: One Man's Irreverent Look at Being a Teacher Today

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:30 - 4:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.026

From the critically acclaimed author of Daddy Needs a Drink - hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "consistently hilarious" - comes a series of irreverent, wickedly observant essays about what it really means to be a teacher today. With his trademark wit and wisdom, Robert Wilder dissects the world's noblest profession -whether he's taming a classroom full of hormonal teenagers or going one-on-one with the school bully.

Wilder was twenty-six when he found his true calling. Leaving a lucrative advertising career in New York, he got a job as an assistant first-grade teacher at a Santa Fe alternative school - and never looked back. Now he brings his unique perspective - as a teacher, parent, and former student - to a series of laugh-out-loud essays that show teaching at its most absurd ... and most rewarding. With brutal candor, he chronicles his own lively adventures in modern education, from navigating cutthroat kindergarten sign-ups to subbing for a class experiment gone wrong - and dares to tell about it.

Authors: Robert Wilder
Introduction By: Janet Pierson

Light & Dark: The Elements of Mystery

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.028

These three writers have either won the Edgar Award, the top prize in the mystery genre, or been a finalist for it; the art of modulating suspense, fright, and humor are old hat for them. But that doesn't mean it gets easier with each successive book. They'll have a conversation about how they've concocted stories to freak us out, or to make us laugh while doing so.





Authors: Ben Rehder
David Liss
Joe R. Lansdale
Moderated By: Sol Smith

Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:30 - 12:15
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.028

Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean is about how you really speak, and why it's normal for your casual, everyday speech to be filled with verbal blunders - about one in every ten words. Why do they happen? Why can't we control them? What can you tell about the people who make them?

In this charming, engaging account of language in the wild, linguist and writer Michael Erard also explains why our attention to some verbal blunders rises and falls. Why was the spoonerism named after Reverend Spooner, not some other absent-minded person? Where did the Freudian slip come from? Why do we prize "umlessness" in speaking? And how do we explain the American presidents who are famous for their verbal blundering?

You'll have new ways to listen to yourself and others once you've met the people who work with verbal blunders every day - journalists, transcribers, interpreters, police officers, linguists, psychologists, among others - and when you've learned what verbal blunders tell about who we are and what we want.


Authors: Michael Erard
Introduction By: Logan Fox

I Love You, I Hate You: Writing about Love

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:30 - 1:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.028

Ah, love. At weddings we hear the famous verse from Corinthians touting its virtues, but in fiction, the fallout from love can be thrilling and funny to read about. Andrea Meyer and Marsha Moyer have new novels out about love, but in nonfiction about love, we tend to expect some kind of gritty insight about it, which is what Marion Winik and Jesse Sublett's memoirs provide. Join them for a conversation about what it's like to write about protagonists in love versus yourself in love.


Authors: Marion Winik
Jesse Sublett
Marsha Moyer
Andrea Meyer
Moderated By: Cyndi Hughes

The Nature of Health: How America Lost, and Can Regain, a Basic Human Value

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:00 - 2:45
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.028

How do we organize healthcare services in accordance with fundamental human rights, while competing with scientific and technological advances, powerful commercial interests, and widespread public ignorance?

In The Nature of Health: How America Lost, and Can Regain, a Basic Human Value Dr. Michael Fine argues against a health system fixated on the pursuit of longevity and suggests an alternative where the ability of an individual to function in worthwhile relationships is a better, more human goal.

Fine's controversial book examines the meaning of health, and proves how a community-centred healthcare system improves local economy, creates social capital and is affordable, rational, personal, and just.

Authors: Michael Fine
Introduction By: Paul Stekler

South Toward Home: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 12:00 - 1:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.030




Authors: Frances Brannen Vick
Jerry Thompson
Jane Clements Monday
Introduction By: Laura Castro

The Writers' League of Texas presents the Violet Crown & Teddy Book Awards

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 3:00 - 4:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.030

The Writers' League of Texas recognizes the winners and finalists of its Violet Crown and Teddy Children's Book Awards, an annual contest established to honor outstanding published books written by League members. Contest winners sit on a panel for a Q&A session and Festival attendees are invited to check out all finalists' books at the Writers' League exhibition booth throughout the weekend. The 2007 Awards are sponsored by Henna Chevrolet, Valero Energy, and Barnes & Noble.


Moderated By: Amanda King

Badgerdog: Youth Voices in Ink

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Capitol Extension Room E1.012 (Children's Events)

Austin non-profit Badgerdog teaches the basic reading and journaling practices that build a young author's repertoire of literary techniques. Students are led in the processes of critical reading and listening - mining the works of contemporary and classic masters, the texts of their peers, their own drafts, and even overheard conversations to find the rhetorical turns, figures of speech, and narrative structures that will become the cornerstones of their individual styles. A number of participants in Badgerdog's programs contribute their work to the non-profit's literary journal Youth Voices in Ink, and they will be reading from their contributions at this event. 


Moderated By: Melanie Moore

Austin Bat Cave: Write at the Festival

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:30 - 12:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E1.012 (Children's Events)

Austin Bat Cave, a new writing and tutoring center for kids, is offering a free writing workshop for sixth to ninth graders. This summer, Austin Bat Cave offered its first three-day workshop that featured bookmaking, playwriting, slam poetry, and more. During the Texas Book Festival workshop, adult writers will guide younger writers through creative writing exercises designed for expression of all varieties - from laughing out loud to whimsical word plays.  All writing levels are welcomed. To sign up, email austinbatcave@gmail.com. Please arrive on time; late arrivals will not be able to participate. Space is limited.

Moderated By: Mike Evans

UIL Writing Contest Winners

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:30 - 3:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E1.012 (Children's Events)

Every year, the University Interscholastic League (UIL) collaborates with the Texas Book Festival to sponsor a statewide fiction writing competition for students in grades 7-12.  Students' submissions are judged by published children's authors or publishing industry professionals, including Lila Guzamn, April Lurie, Meg Shoemaker, and Madeline Smoot this year. The first place winner in each division is invited to the Festival's opening ceremonies and has an opportunity to read from their winning essays at this session. Congratulations to this year's winners: Student winners are Chris Bakka (11-12th grade division) of Wimberley; Lindsey Maxon (9-10th grade division) of Arlington; and Nancy Juarez (7-8th grade division) of Strawn. The UIL competition is one of the many avenues the Festival uses to promote writing, reading, and literacy. The Festival would like to thank Herman, Howry & Breen for their generous sponsorship of the UIL Writing Contest.




Emceed By: Lila Guzmán

Babyproofing Your Marriage

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 10:00 - 10:45
Location: Lifestyle Tent (10th & Congress)

The Babyproofers are three women who wouldn't trade their roles as mothers for anything, and they love their husbands deeply. But after living through it and hearing the stories of hundreds of other couples, they know that with young children in the house, you need to block the stairs with baby gates, put plastic covers over the outlets, and take the necessary steps to safeguard your marriage.

Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows is the warts-and-all truth about how having children can affect your relationship. The authors explore the transition to parenthood in light of their own experiences, with input from their husbands and commentary from men and women across the country. Their evenhanded approach to both sides of the marital equation allows spouses to understand each other in a whole new way.

Authors: Julia Stone
Cathy O'Neill
Introduction By: Larry Norwood

ScreamFree Parenting

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 11:00 - 11:45
Location: Lifestyle Tent (10th & Congress)

Hal Edward Runkel's ScreamFree Parenting is not just about lowering your voice. It's about learning to calm your emotional reactions and learning to focus on your own behavior more than your kids' behavior ... for their benefit. a parent's biggest enemy is not the TV, the Internet, or even drugs: their biggest enemy is their own emotional reactivity. When they say they "lost it" with their kids, the "it" in that sentence is their own adulthood.

It's time to do it differently. And you can. You can start to create and enjoy the types of calm, mutually respectful, and loving relationships with your kids that you've always craved. You can begin to revolutionize your family, starting tonight.


Authors: Hal Edward Runkel
Introduction By: Carrie Contey

The Kids' Book Club Book with Kimberly Willis Holt

Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
Time: 2:00 - 2:45
Location: Lifestyle Tent (10th & Congress)

Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp's The Kids' Book Club Book is the first complete guide - for use by adults and children - to creating fun and educational book clubs for kids. Beloved children's author Kimberly Willis Holt will be joining Gelman and Krupp at this session.

As authors of The Book Club Cookbook, the classic guide to integrating great food and food-related discussion into book club gatherings, Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp heard a common refrain from parents, librarians, teachers, community leaders and kids themselves: "How about writing a book for kids' book clubs?" Indeed, in recent years youth organizations, parents, libraries, schools, and local, state, and federal governments have launched thousands of book clubs for children as a way to counter falling literacy rates and foster a love of reading.

Based on surveys of  500 youth book clubs across the country and interviews with parents, kids, educators, and librarians, The Kids' Book Club Book features ideas and advice on forming great kids' book clubs - and tips for kids who want to start their own book clubs; and recipes, activities, and insights from bestselling children's authors - information the authors will be sharing at this session.



Authors: Vicki Levy Krupp
Kimberly Willis Holt
Judy Gelman
Introduction By: MaryJo Humphreys