The 6th Annual Book Festival is on its way, opening Friday, September 19 with keynote speaker and Kent County native Ryan Grim, Washington Bureau Editor for The Huffington Post.
This year’s festival will also embrace the Harry Potter Read-a-Thon on September 20 and the Harry Potter Festival, September 26-27).
As an experiment, the Book Festival will not be offering display and sales tables for authors and publishers this year. Seeking to find the right balance of speakers, writers and publishers, a different equation may be considered for next year’s event.
Here, Chair of the Chestertown Book Festival Owen Bailey, talks about the upcoming festival.
For more information go to: www.chestertownbookfestival.org or see their Facebook page.
Festival Events:
At 7 PM Friday, September 19, our keynote speaker Ryan Grim, Washington Bureau Chief for The Huffington Post and Kent County native, will give a talk on America’s Drug War and the growing shift towards police militarization. Grim is the author of This is Your Country on Drugs, winner of the 2007 Alt-Weekly Award for best long-form news-story for “The Painmaker,” the December 2010 Sidney Hillman Award for “The Poorhouse,” and the 2011 Maggie award for “Behind the Assault on Planned Parenthood.” This event will take place at the Bookplate on Cross Street in Chestertown.
On Saturday, September 20, from 10 AM – 12 PM, The Chestertown Book Festival will host the Harry Potter Read-a-Thon at the Chestertown Branch of the Kent County Public Library. Sign up to read, or come out to listen as volunteers and participants begin reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. To sign up, please send an email to [email protected] or call The Bookplate at (410) 778-4167. Deadline is September 12th. This event is part of the Chestertown Harry Potter Festival (September 26 – 27, 2014)
The following week, at 4:30 PM on Friday, September 26th in collaboration with the Chestertown Harry Potter Festival, the Book Festival rounds out the year with Washington College Professor and Chair of the History Department, Janet Sorrentino. Her lecture, Harry Potter, Renaissance Magic, and a Passion for Books, will delve into the power and the magic of the books that helped J.K. Rowling create the world of Harry Potter.
The Chestertown Book Festival is sponsored by the Friends of the Kent County Public Library, The Rose O’Neill Literary House, The Sophie Kerr Committee, the C.V. Starr Center for the American Experience, The Chestertown Harry Potter Festival, and the Kent County Arts Council.
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