Sixteen years. Over twenty thousand attendees each of the past six. Three hundred and fifty-three authors and storytellers, editors, and agents participating in two hundred and six events this year alone. March in Central Virginia comes in like a lion and goes out looking for a librarian, list of favorite Virginia Festival of the Book authors in hand. This year's celebration of all things literary will run from March 17-21 at bookstores, theaters, and makeshift salons all over town. As always, most events are free. Advance tickets for the always-popular Culbreth events are $10, with free tickets available at noon on the day of the event. The Festival Web site (www.vabook.org) has an interactive “Pack Your Bookbag” feature that makes it easy to plan one's Festival itinerary.

From A to Z

From prose to poetry, from “Abigail Adams” to “Abigail Spells,” the Festival has programs for every reading taste and level. Want to hear the next generation of writers? Catch the Festival's opening ceremony at the Central Branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, where state winners of the school-based, Library of Congress-sponsored Letters about Literature contest will read letters of appreciation to their favorite authors, and the winners of The Hook's writing contest will be announced.

Love wandering through old cemeteries? Attend the “Cemeteries as History: Lynchburg and Arlington” program with Jane White (“Once Upon a Time: A Cemetery Story”) and Robert Poole (“On Hallowed Ground”) Wednesday afternoon in the City Council Chambers.

Can't imagine what the creative process must be like when two authors marry each other? Catch the “Writers Under the Same Roof” program Wednesday evening in the City Council Chambers with University of Virginia Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Biomedical Ethics Lois Shepherd (“If That Ever Happens to Me: Making Life and Death Decisions after Terri Schiavo”) and husband Paul Shepherd (“More Like Not Running Away: A Novel”), former writer-in-residence at Florida State University.

Feel in a “now for something completely different” mood? Try the “Buddha, NASCAR, and Ballgames” program Thursday afternoon at the Student Bookstore on the Corner with Staunton's Arlynda Boyer, Virginia Tech's Roland Lazenby, and John Hopkins University's Tim Wendel.

Want to meet one of your favorite authors? Buy a ticket for the Author's Reception Saturday evening at the Paramount Theater hosted by John Casteen IV, novelist Cathy Maxwell, mystery writer Andy Straka, and memoirist Phyllis Theroux.

Grownups Talk, Kids Walk: A History of “Sesame Street,” Plus a Parade

Journalist Michael Davis is the author of New York Times bestseller “Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street.” In an address that would surely flummox Big Bird, Davis will speak on “The Significance of Sesame Street” at the Miller Center on Old Ivy Road Wednesday morning. Come Saturday noon, “Sesame Street's” Maria, Sonia Manzano, will lead young viewers on a parade from the Omni Hotel to the Paramount Theater, for music, stories, and an opportunity to sign up for library cards. Manzano's appearance is but one of seven StoryFest events taking place on and around the Mall and Piedmont Virginia Community College Saturday from 10-3.

Lee Smith: Novelist, Short Story Writer, Southerner

The term “Southern writer” is one some authors reject as provincial, and others glory in. Saturday at noon at City Space on the Downtown Mall, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) will host an appearance by Lee Smith, in a program entitled “Sense of Place: Natural Landscapes and the Southern Writer.” This celebrated “Southern” writer, who hails from rural Southwest Virginia, will discuss the influence of its beautiful landscape and oral storytelling tradition on her work, and will read from her new collection of short stories, “Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger.”

I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears – Huh?

Friday evening's program for foodies and word junkies at Barnes and Noble, “A Culinary and Linguistic World Tour,” will feature self-confessed “language addict” and “amateur idiomologist” Jag Bhalla (“I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears”) and Summer Whitford (“Join Us at the Embassy”). Bhalla's book, published by National Geographic, takes its title from the Russian equivalent for “I'm not pulling your leg,” and collects 1,000 idiomatic and amusing expressions from around the world. Food and wine “diva” Whitford is a professional chef, wine marketer, and blogger, and president of Chez Vous Productions, a food specialty and lifestyle company. Her book is a “gastronomic tour of Washington embassies,” including those of Afghanistan, Austria, Chile, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kenya, and Portugal.

Home Grown

Festival of the Book director Nancy Damon counts over 50 local and locally born authors with University of Virginia connections, many of whom have appeared at the Festival in years past. Homegrown writer and U.Va. graduate Kate Atwood, author of “A Healing Place: Help Your Child Find Hope and Happiness After the Loss of a Loved One,” will participate in the "Life-Changing Experiences" program Sunday afternoon at the U.Va. Bookstore.

Area native Hayden Saunier, an actor and voice-over artist whose first collection of poetry is entitled “Tips for Domestic Travel,” will take part in the “Elegies and Invocations” program Thursday evening at the New Dominion Bookstore on the Downtown Mall.

Children's writer and illustrator Anna Alter is the daughter of Charlottesville painter and art teacher Lee Alter. Now living in Massachusetts, Alter attended Greer and Stone Robinson elementary schools and Tandem Friends School and studied children's book illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design before a stint in the children's book publishing industry. Anna will read from her books and stories, including “Abigail Spells,” to the next generation of readers and writers at four area schools.

Publishing Day

Dream of seeing your name on a hardback cover? Head over to the Omni Hotel on Saturday for Publishing Day, always one of the Festival's most popular features. This year's edition has been expanded from the usual five or six panels to twelve separate programs, including a kids and adolescents track with “Terrific Kids' Novels Adults Will Love Too,” “Getting Published: Picture Books to Young Adults,” and “Hot Young Teen and Adult Fiction.” Two attorneys with expertise in intellectual property rights will offer legal advice, discussing common legal issues for authors and publishers and taking questions afterward. For “Dancing with Manuscripts--How to Hook an Editor on the First Page,” writers are invited to submit a first page online through March 12 for professional evaluation. Four agents will be on hand for the Agents' Roundtable, while over at The Southern Cafe and Music Hall off the Downtown Mall, the “Book Technology (Cutting Edge to Bleeding Edge)” program will offer prescient looks at the brave new design world for books and vooks.

Tickets Needed

Tickets for Festival Business Breakfasts and Crime Wave and Festival Luncheons go on sale each fall and generally sell out early. This year at press time there were still tickets available for each.

Business Breakfast speaker Michael Gelb says his friends call his new book, “How to Drink Like Leonardo DaVinci.” The real title is “How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci,” but Gelb, a Batten Fellow at the U.Va. Darden School this spring, is the same guy leading the “Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking” to-do at Tastings on Market Street. The breakfast will be at the Omni Hotel Wednesday morning. The wine tasting and poetry writing affair, which will include food, will be Wednesday evening.

Michael Malone, head scriptwriter for the 1990's soap opera “One Life to Live” and author of “Four Corners of the Sky: A Novel,” as well as short stories and non-fiction, will address the Festival Luncheon on Thursday at the Omni.

Agatha Award nominee Julia Spencer-Fleming, author of “One Was a Soldier” and six other mysteries, will address the Crime Luncheon Saturday at the Omni. Scattered throughout the audience--whether for good or for ill is yet to be seen--will be other “crime wave” Festival authors.

Raffles, Readings, and Accents

Festival attendees can support the Festival and add to their fun by purchasing tickets to four different raffles: for one's name in a mystery novel by Virginia wine-and-crime novelist Ellen Crosby; for a custom Web site for oneself, one's book, or one's business; for a basket of 16 books signed by their authors; and for a critique of one's writing--query letter, synopsis, and up to 50 pages of a manuscript – by literary agent Jenny Bent. Tickets for each are $16, and the winners, who do not need to be present, will be announced at the “American Accents” program at the Paramount Saturday evening. The program will feature Lee Smith, poet E. Ethelbert Miller (“The Fifth Inning”), Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout (“Olive Kitteridge”), and National Book Award winner Colum McCann (“Let the Great World Spin”). Tickets are $10.

Book Stories, Common Stories

In the 16 years of its existence, the Virginia Festival of the Book has grown from presenting a handful of programs to the over 200 on offer today. Kevin McFadden, Chief Operating Officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which sponsors the Festival, calls it “by far our most visible event. The Foundation knew the Festival “had tipped to the national level,” McFadden says, “when we started seeing 'New York, L.A. Washington, D.C., Charlottesville'” on publisher's book tour sheets.

“The libraries and the book culture of this town have been laudable,” McFadden says, noting “the engagement of more than a hundred organizations that come together to bring a discussion to the greater community.” It's a discussion that reaches out beyond adult readers to draw in “between 5 and 10,000 students in area schools” every year. Of the 350-plus authors coming our way this month, McFadden says, “their books contain many stories, and we look at this event as a way to share those stories.” Even more than that, McFadden says, “our calling is to shape our common story: the story of the humanities and humanity that connect us to each other.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________

A Conversation with Children’s Author Anna Alter

Charlottesville-born children's author and illustrator Anna Alter will be attending and participating in the Virginia Festival of the Book for the first time. She was kind enough to answer a few questions recently.

On her school visit presentations: “I start by walking kids through the steps I went through to become an author and artist. I show them the kinds of paintings and drawings I did when I was their age and explain how my interest in storytelling turned into the desire to make books. Then I break down the publishing process into simple steps that they can understand; I try to relate each step (brainstorming, sketching, writing, revising, etc.) to skills that they are learning in school. The message I want them to get by the end is that creative writing and making art is something they can do too, and if they keep practicing they could turn it into a job one day. I also make sure they know that I rarely get things right the first time around. Perseverance and dedication are what get me through!”

On favorite book spots: “Growing up, we often visited the Jefferson-Madison Library on East Market Street. As a grade-schooler, I can still remember carrying home tall stacks of books each week. We also paid frequent visits to the Williams Corner Bookstore and Shenanigans. I still have books we purchased there more than 25 years ago.”

On Charlottesville as a formative influence: “Charlottesville is a great place to grow up; it has such a rich artistic community. I took classes everywhere from Piedmont Virginia Community College (with Chica Tenney) to the McGuffey Art Center. Also, it didn't hurt to attend Tandem School, which had a lot going on for a young person with an interest in the arts. The guidance I received from all the creative people around me really helped prepare me for art school.”

On her next book: “I've just completed the illustrations for my next picture book, which I am very excited about. It’s called ‘Disappearing Desmond’ and will be in bookstores this fall. The story is about a shy little cat who goes to great lengths to disappear and blend into the background so he won't be noticed, and what happens when he is spotted at last by an outgoing rabbit named Gloria.”