2009 Texas Book Festival

This weekend, approximately 35,000 book lovers are expected to converge in Austin for the 2009 Texas Book Festival. The two-day event is scheduled for October 31st and November 1st on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol. Admission is free and open to the public.

Festival goers will have access to more than 200 accomplished Texas and national authors. In addition to panel discussions and book readings, attendees will also have an opportunity to get their books signed by authors, enjoy concessions from local vendors, and hear live musical entertainment.

Authors to headline this year’s event include Buzz Aldrin, Margaret Atwood, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Bryan Burrough, Jeanette Walls, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Taylor Branch.

Brief History of the Festival

Former First Lady Laura Bush and a group of volunteers dedicated to the advocacy of literacy formed the Texas Book Festival in 1995. The organization has provided more than $2.3 million in grants to public libraries since the festival’s inception. Additionally, the organization has reached more than 30,000 children in economically disadvantaged Central and South Texas Schools through its Reading Rock Stars program.

Festival Details

• Meet the Authors
• Schedule of Events
• How to Attend (Parking, house rules, disability services, etc.)
• Exhibitors and Vendors
• Children’s Chapter (Children’s schedule)
• Make A Donation (Help support Texas literacy)
• Event Sponsors

For the latest festival information, visit the Texas Book Festival Web site.

Recommended Sessions

Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend the book festival this year. Therefore, I am recommending the sessions I would personally be interested in attending.

• Are Books Dead?: The Digital Future of Reading
• The National Parks: America’s Best Idea
• Too Big to Fail: How the American Economy Collapsed
• Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Ads
• Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness
• Austin Film Festival & TBF present Survivin’ Hollywood: Three Texas Movie Pros
• Barbara Ehrenreich

Please share your thoughts in the comments section if you attend any of these sessions. I would love to hear what I missed!

You can find a list of other scheduled sessions on the festival Web site.

Are Books Dead?: The Digital Future of Reading

Saturday, October 31, 2009
10:00 – 11:00
House Chamber

The question about the future of reading isn’t whether books should be published digitally – they already are, obviously, and there’s no going back, despite the misgivings of readers and writers who love the feel of a book – that thing with pages and a binding – in their hands. The future of reading is an exciting prospect but it can often seem befuddling – are handheld books going away? Will the changes in the way books are published change the way books are written? We’ve asked three experts on the future of reading to talk about what’s next in publishing during this session.

The following panelists will be in conversation with one another during this session:

Allen Weiner is a research vice president for Gartner’s Media IAS service. Mr. Weiner has more than 25 years of experience as an analyst, writer, editor, publisher and broadcaster. He has written about media trends in daily newspapers and magazines as well as serving as a chief analyst and architect of Gartner Dataquest’s Internet/E-Commerce/E-media cover from 1994 to 1999. Prior to re-joining Gartner in August 2003, Mr. Weiner launched a new publishing company, Convergence Publishing, in March 2002, and published its flagship product, Biotech Tech, a monthly trade magazine focusing on technology and its role in life sciences.

Kana Shae is the Director of Marketing at Books on Board, the largest independent ebook online store, which is based in Austin.

Ron Hogan helped create the literary Internet by launching Beatrice.com in 1995. He has also written about the business side of publishing as a senior editor for GalleyCat. He is the author of The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane, a visual tribute to ’70s Hollywood, and a contributor to the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning.

Moderator Bob Carlton is the Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Austin-based LibreDigital, which markets, publishes, and distributes digital content. Carlton has been at the forefront of the emerging digital content market  for 25 years. He was part of the launch team for CourseSmart, the leading e-book company in higher education, which was founded and supported by the five leading publishers. Carlton just finished reading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years on his Kindle and is about to start David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries.

Moderated By: Bob Carlton

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea

with Ken Burns’ collaborator Dayton Duncan

Saturday, October 31, 2009
1:00 – 1:45
Capitol Auditorium Room E1.004

America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Dayton Duncan (long-time collaborator with Ken Burns) delves into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly 400 sites and 84 million acres. Moderator Richard S. Dunham is the Washington bureau chief of the Houston Chronicle and Hearst Newspapers. He also manages the Chronicle’s popular DC political web site, Texas on the Potomac. Every summer, he hikes the magnificent mountains and canyons of the U.S. National Parks system.

Authors: Dayton Duncan
Moderated By: Richard Dunham

Too Big to Fail: How the American Economy Collapsed

featuring Andrew Ross Sorkin

Saturday, October 31, 2009
2:15 – 3:00
House Chamber

In Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis – and Lost, Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami; he’ll be talking about the book during this session and how some of the financial industry’s high-ranking officials became his sources. Sorkin is the award-winning chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for The New York Times, a columnist, and assistant editor of business and finance news.

Moderator Brian D. Sweany is the deputy editor of Texas Monthly magazine. He started out as an intern in the publisher’s office of Texas Monthly in January 1996 and was hired as a copy editor in the editorial department later that year. Born and raised outside of Dallas, Sweany earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of North Texas, in Denton, and a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Sweany has also served as an assistant professor in the journalism department at Ithaca College, in New York. He is active in a number of civic and volunteer organizations, including serving on the board of the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas and coaching his daughter’s six-and-under soccer team.

Authors: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Moderated By: Brian Sweany

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Ads

with Dwight Garner

Saturday, October 31, 2009
3:00 – 3:45
Capitol Extension Room E2.010

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements features more than 400 vintage book ads – startling and strange, beautiful and funny – that together reveal a kind of secret history of America’s literary culture over the last century. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner brings together original ads for classic books – On the Road, Invisible Man, Silent Spring, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, Lolita, and dozens of others – at a time when they were simply books, not yet icons.

Introducer Brenda Branch has been with the Austin Public Library since 1972/1977 (1 ½ year interruption of service) and has been the Director of the Austin Public Library since 1991. She is responsible for a staff of 370 employees and a budget of $24.1 Million. Ms. Branch determines Library policy for a system consisting of the John Henry Faulk Central Library, 20 branch libraries and the Austin History Center. Ms. Branch received her Masters of Library Science degree from the Sate University of New York at Buffalo in 1972, and a Masters in Public Administration degree from Southwest Texas State University in 1985.

Authors: Dwight Garner
Introduction By: Brenda Branch

Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness

with Willard Spiegelman

Sunday, November 1, 2009
1:00 – 1:45
Capitol Extension Room E2.014

Using personal anecdotes as well as wisdom from philosophers and writers, Willard Spiegelman’s Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness explores what it means to be happy. Spiegelman reminds us of seven daily activities that can contribute to happiness: reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming, and writing. What distinguishes Seven Pleasures, however, is that it isn’t the latest self-help manual; instead, Spiegelman recommends low-cost, useful approaches to increasing daily happiness.

Authors: Willard Spiegelman
Introduction By: Mary Margaret Farabee

Austin Film Festival & TBF present Survivin’ Hollywood: Three Texas Movie Pros

with Robert Hinkle, Gary Kent, and Billy Taylor

Sunday, November 1, 2009
2:00 – 3:00
Capitol Extension Room E2.014

What could be more glamorous than working in Hollywood? (We can barely write that sentence with a straight face.) Three books being published this year by Texans – one a former voice coach to Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, among others; a former stuntman who worked with Jack Nicholson; and a former grip, now turned novelist – will talk about their lives and work in the film industry during this session. So what could be more glamorous than working in Hollywood? A lot of things, it turns out, but that doesn’t mean that being behind-the-scenes in Hollywood can’t also be a lot of fun.

Moderator Barbara Morgan co-founded the Austin Film Festival (AFF) in 1994 after a series of successful ventures in the music industry. Since 1999, Morgan has served as the executive director of the AFF, the first event of its kind to celebrate the screenwriter as the heart of the creative process of filmmaking. In its eleven-year history, the Festival has expanded to include a four-day screenwriter’s conference, eight-day film program, screenplay and teleplay contests and a film competition.

Authors: Billy Taylor, Gary Kent, Robert Hinkle
Moderated By: Barbara Morgan

Barbara Ehrenreich

talks about her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Sunday, November 1, 2009
3:30 – 4:15
House Chamber

Americans are a “positive” people – cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Pursuit of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Ehrenreich is the author of 16 previous books, including the bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. Ehrenreich will be introduced by Sarah Bird, winner of the Spring 2010 Dobie-Paisano Fellowship. Bird is the author, most recently, of How Perfect is That; her writing has appeared in Oprah’s Magazine, New York Times Magazine, and Salon, among many other publications.

Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich
Introduction By: Sarah Bird

Note: Session information is from the schedule of events section of the festival Web site.

Connect with the Texas Book Festival

You can connect with the Texas Book Festival on Facebook and Twitter (@texasbookfest). The official Twitter hash tag for this event is #txbf.

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