Which authors will you see in 2017?

Start making your plans! The 2017 Festival will take place March 22-26.  We are thrilled to announce seven 2017 Virginia Festival of the Book headliners, including featured speakers for the Leadership Breakfast, Festival Luncheon, and Crime Wave Brunch.

Through their bestselling and award-winning work, these headliners address Andrew Wyeth’s influence, real and imagined; family ties, to community and to murder; a realistic look at the American economy, from past influencers to necessary changes; how failure moves science forward; diner food, traditional to modern; and odes to poets, ancient and contemporary.

Keep reading for details about who you’ll have the chance to see in March…

Leadership Breakfast: 3/22

Neurobiologist Stuart Firestein, author of Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, will speak at the Leadership Breakfast on Wednesday, March 22. Department chair of biological sciences at Columbia University, he is also an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow and an adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program for the Public Understanding of Science.
Tickets to this event are available for purchase at VaBook.org beginning Thursday, September 15 at 9:00 AM.

Festival Luncheon: 3/23

Christina Baker Kline, author of New York Times bestseller Orphan Train and the forthcoming A Piece of the World, will speak at the Festival Luncheon on Thursday, March 23. Born in Cambridge, England, Kline is a graduate of Yale (BA in English), Cambridge University (MA in Literature), and the University of Virginia (MFA), where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing.
Tickets to this event are available for purchase at VaBook.org beginning Thursday, September 15 at 9:00 AM. Sponsored by Dominion, Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, and Wells Fargo.

Crime Wave Brunch: 3/25

Laura Lippman is the New York Times-bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including her latest,Wilde Lake. She will speak at the Crime Wave Brunch on Saturday, March 25. In addition to winning the Edgar, Anthony, and Agatha Awards, Lippman was the first recipient of the Baltimore Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer selected as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.
Tickets to this event are available for purchase at VaBook.org beginning Thursday, September 15 at 9:00 AM. Sponsored by Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library.

Other Headliners

Kwame Alexander, author of the forthcoming Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, is a poet, educator, and author of twenty-one books for children, including The Crossover, which was awarded the 2015 Newbery Medal. The founder of two literacy organizations, he regularly travels the world as a literacy advocate and expert.

Ekua Holmes, illustrator of Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, is a fine artist living in Boston. The first children’s book she illustrated was Carole Boston Weatherford’s Voice of Freedom, which was a Caldecott Honor Book and a Sibert Honor Book and for which she also won the John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award.

Joseph Stiglitz, author of The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979, is a professor at Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

Ashley Christensen, author ofPoole’s: Recipes and Stories from a Modern Diner, is the chef and owner of seven restaurants in Raleigh, N.C. In 2014, she was awarded the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast.

Don’t forget! Tickets to select events are available for purchase at VaBook.org! Additional authors and programs for the 2017 Virginia Festival of the Book will be announced as they are confirmed.

The Festival appreciates the ongoing support of our sponsors. Wish to join them? Contact Jane Kulow at 434-924-7548 or [email protected].