Virginia’s Festival of the Book is six months away, but readers are already buzzing about the 2016 line-up of authors.
Lovers of fiction will have the chance to meet Sara Gruen who wrote the best-seller Water for Elephants, and fans of spy novels can expect Alan Furst, who will host the crime wave brunch. On the non-fiction side, the fest will feature a name familiar to NPR listeners during an evening devoted to the subject of immigrants.
“The keynote book is by Tom Gjelten, a national NPR correspondent," says Festival Director Jane Kulow. "His research was based on immigrant families in Fairfax County, Virginia.”
Kulow is also expecting children’s author Jon Scieszka, best known for his book, “The Stinky Cheese Man,” and historian Douglas Brinkley, who will speak about his new biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“You might think that we know everything there is to know," she jokes, "but he’s looking at FDR’s environmental legacy, and he’s looking at the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps and what was done with the national parks, and we’re looking at putting him on a stage with representatives from the national parks.”
The Virginia Festival of the Book will feature about 200 programs, most of them free. It runs from March 16th to the 20th in Charlottesville.