Sonoma County Book Festival ( with Napa Valley Connections).

What better way to spend a September Saturday in Sonoma than browsing the 12th Annual Sonoma County Book Festival? It's less then two weeks away (Sept 24th), so you still have time to pencil it in ~ and then do it!  Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa will bloom with tents, all filled-to-bursting with books, readings, panels, signings and all things literary.  Events usually spill out of the square into venues nearby, with readings and panels at the Central Library Forum Room, Corrick's, Mary's Pizza Shack, La Rosa's Tequileria. Plenty of kid's activities and throngs and throngs of poets and writers milling about. What's not to adore?

Just published!

And among the throngs ~  Maxine Hong Kingston, Jane Hirshfield, Ann Packer...as well as Francisco X. Alarcon, Belva Davis, Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Gaye LeBaron, Andrew Lam, Michael David Lukas.  Some (like moi)  might notice that the festival is seeded with Napa Valley-ites, both faculty and workshop attendees. Jane Hirschfield, one of our faculty stalwarts, and Ann Packer, faculty in 2008, will be reading at the Central Library Forum Room. I know of at least two alumni with reading slots, poet Judy Halebsky, from this past summer ("Sky=Empty") and Michael David Lukas, (2009) whose well-received debut novel "Oracle of Stamboul"  came out in paperback just this September.

Judy Halebsky

There are probably even more, but I'll let you discover them for yourself. So pack up your spectacles, fleece for the morning fog, parasol for the afternoon sun and be ready to indulge in literature, writers and words all the live-long day.

Napa News!

A two'fer for Napa alumni:

Conference attendee (2009) Michael David Lukas' debut novel "The Oracle of Stamboul" was published this February by Harper Collins. Yahoooiee! Michael brought his first chapter to workshop; I'm sure those of us who had the privilege of reading it remember the opening scene: white and purple hoopoes flying over the town square as invading Russian troops gather for their assault on Constanta, a father racing to his wife's side as their daughter is born. A wonderful interweaving of plots and characters, of rising tension and a future unfolding.  Reviewers have called it "a gem of a first novel," "a delight," "enchanting."   This one is getting fast-tracked to the top of my reading-stack.

Plus, Reese Kwon, a Napa attenedee from that same summer, wrote a lively interview with Michael David Lukas that was published on The Rumpus.

Read and enjoy!