Arts & Entertainment

21 Authors in 4 Genres Announced for First-Ever Morristown Festival of Books

Inaugural two-day event will kick off Friday, Sept. 26.

If you read it, they will come.

The first-ever Morristown Festival of Books, scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Sept. 26 and 27, has announced its lineup of 21 authors in four genres who will speak with readers about their creations.

Among them is a Pulitzer Prize winner, best-selling children’s author and noted human rights activist.

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The genres include Non-fiction; Contemporary fiction; Children’s literature; and Young Adult. The authors appearing in each category are:

Non-fiction:

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  • Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion (Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen)
  • Dan Fagin (Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction)
  • Allyson Hobbs (A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life)
  • Philip K. Howard (The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government)
  • Marta McDowell (Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales)
  • Michael Aaron Rockland (Navy Crazy; An American Diplomat in Franco Spain)

Contemporary fiction: 

  • Ishmael Beah (Radiance of Tomorrow)
  • Dorothea Benton Frank (The Hurricane Sisters)
  • Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (Bittersweet)
  • Breena Clarke (Angels Make Their Hope Here)
  • Julia Fierro (Cutting Teeth)
  • Caroline Leavitt (Is This Tomorrow)
  • Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You)
  • Martha Woodroof (Small Blessings)

Children’s literature: 

  • Nancy Krulik (Featuring Burp or Treat, Smell My Feet from the George Brown, Class Clown series, and Go Fetch from the Magic Bone series)
  • Jane O’Connor (The Fancy Nancy series, with featured title Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of the Century

Young Adult: 

  • Lisa Colozza Cocca (Providence, featured title of the “One Community, One Book” initiative)
  • Elizabeth Eulberg (Better Off Friends)
  • Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14: Savage Drift)
  • Kieran Scott (Only Everything)

The event is headlined by William D. Cohan, author of The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities. Cohan will be the keynote speaker Friday night at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, sponsored by Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management.

The 21 authors will speak and answer questions all day Saturday in one-hour sessions at five locations, all of which are within walking distance to each other. They include St. Peter’s Church Sanctuary and Parish House, The Presbyterian Church in Morristown Parish House, the Morristown/Morris Township Library, and the Starlight Room at the Mayo Performing Arts Center.

Book sales and signing will occur at a tent on the grounds of the historic Vail Mansion, according to the Morristown Festival of Books Committee.

To find out more about the festival, visit morristownfestivalofbooks.org.


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