It's lively, it's local, and it's coming this Saturday! What is this wonder? It's the Gaithersburg Book Festival, this Saturday, May 19 from 10 AM - 6 PM on the grounds of the Gaithersburg City Hall. Admission to the festival is free and so is the parking.
Festival activities include author talks, writing workshops, a children's village full of fun activities, exhibitors like Friends of the Library, Montgomery County, Politics and Prose Bookstore, and (drum roll please!) Montgomery County Public Libraries, and a performance stage featuring a variety of singers, poets, and musicians.
The writing workshops will feature numerous sessions for adults and teens, and for children as well. Given my diminished attention span lately, I'm considering the Flash Fiction 101 workshop. It's all about the basic elements of fiction and creative non-fiction narratives that are under a thousand words. Tyrese L. Coleman, associate editor of the online flash fiction journal Smokelong Quarterly, will be leading this workshop. My son loves graphic novels, so maybe he'll find inspiration in Comics Character Team Up. It's all about creating engaging, unique characters and working with other artists to create great comics. This workshop will be led by Dave Roman, author illustrator of the Astronaut Academy series.
And of course there will be authors, so many authors, giving presentations and signing books. The authors include Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, author of the children's novel of Shiloh and a resident of Gaithersburg, and Mark Bittman, author of 20 acclaimed books including How Cook Everything and VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. Washington Post columnist and Georgetown University professor E.J. Dionne, Jr. will also be there, as well as Aminatta Forna, award-winning author of The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, and, her latest book, Happiness.
The festival blog is definitely worth a look at too. It's got lots of eclectic fun posts by authors who will be at the festival. There are posts about the festival itself of course, such as "5 Reasons to Buy a Book at GBF on Saturday." But many posts are more wide ranging. In "Lessons in Writing Steampunk from Genealogy," for instance, author Laurel Wanrow, explains how stories from her father and grandfather's life in the countryside inspired her to set her series The Luminated Threads in the country rather than the city, the usual setting for steampunk fiction.
So join us this Saturday on the grounds of Gaithersburg City Hall for a fun-filled day of celebrating books. We'll see you there!Labels: Books, Programs and Events
