Fox Cities Book Festival Planned

Nearly 40 authors are scheduled to participate during the five-day festival, including seven noted national authors, at the first-ever Fox Cities Book Festival, which is planned for April 16-20, 2008 at several local venues.

“Books are vitally important to all of us. Reading not only gives us pleasure, it also brings the outside world to us," said Ellen Kort, Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate from 2000 – 2004 and book festival co-chair. “Our goal is to connect readers and writers and celebrate the pure joy of reading.”

The national authors, who have committed to participating in the Fox Cities Book Festival, include: Alice Hoffman; Billy Collins, who served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 – 2003; Naomi Shihab Nye; Charles Baxter; Alex Flinn; Mark Nepo; Michael Perry, a writer and humorist from northwest Wisconsin who has written several books including Population 485: Meeting your Neighbors One Siren at a Time; and Ellen Hart, Carl Brookins, and William Kent Krueger known as the Minnesota Crime Wave, three mystery writers from Minnesota that have written more than 30 books.

A book fair featuring more than 30 publishers will also be held April 19 at City Center Plaza in downtown Appleton. The authors will speak at a variety of locations from local schools and universities to coffee houses and libraries, said Leota Ester, co-chair of the book festival committee.

“Books connect people together. The Fox Cities Book Festival’s purpose is to remind everyone how much fun it is to read a good book. It will be a time to appreciate the authors who write them as we listen to them tell their stories, ask them questions about how they write them and have a chance to talk with them,” she said. “Books are the way we tell our stories, the way we have new and different experiences and are an important way we learn. The festival will celebrate books, their writers and their readers.”

For more information on the Fox Cities Book Festival including a schedule of events, please visit http://www.foxcitiesbookfestival.org.