The tenth annual Boston Book Festival was held this past weekend. I am recovering like a kid after Christmas. This year I rose up in the ranks to "Room Captain." I have the lanyard to prove it! I got to spend the greater part of Saturday in the Mary Norton room at the Old South Church, soaking in bookish bliss.
The entire celebration took place in venues throughout Copley Square, including Emmanuel Church, French Cultural Center, Church of the Covenant, Trinity Church, Old South Church, Boston Public Library, Prudential Center, Boston Architectural College, and Room & Board.
For the first time, East Boston and Roxbury were included as satellites. Also for the first time, a "Hide-a-Book" event was held on Tuesday the 9th, during which Boston Book Festival volunteers hid books in and around Boston and tweeted pictures of them for people to find. The BBF “One City One Story”program was suspended due to claims of plagiarism and litigation.
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A kickoff keynote was at the Old South Church was by Michael Pollan with Meghan Chakrabarti. The festival drew a record crowd. More than 275 authors were featured, and 30,000 people attended. The overall focus of the event was on societal issues such as environment, gun violence, #MeToo, social media, cultural divides, and diplomacy.
Animal activist Sy Montgomery was featured in the "Animal Story" panel. "Twitter ate my Brain" included Michael Rich, Tree Sreenivasan, and Maryanne Wolf. Multi-cultural authors Sam Graham-Felsen, Yang Huang, Blair Hurley, and Fatima Farheen Mirza shared and discussed their work in "Between Cultures." Graham Allison joined James Sebenius and Wendy Sherman in discussion of "Diplomacy: the Art of the Deal."
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Sessions specifically for writers were also offered, as were special programs for young adults and children.
My personal highlights of the day were:
-Meeting Wendy Sherman
-Getting Wendy Sherman's autograph
-Being hugged by Wendy Sherman
(I swear I'm not a stalker!)
-Laughing with other volunteers and attendees during hilarious panel discussions
-Joking with little kids who were enthralled by the festivities
-Chowing down on some darn good vegetarian food courtesy of Eataly
-Meeting fellow book fans and exchanging ideas and Twitter accounts
-Celebrating local authors and sharing the fun vibe with my community
For more information, visit the BBF website https://bostonbookfest.org
or check out the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...