West Virginia Book Festival Announces Full Schedule for 2023

The 2023 West Virginia Book Festival will be held at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center on Saturday, October 21st, featuring bestselling authors R.F. Kuang, William Kent Krueger, Mary Kay Andrews, Sherri Duskey Rinker, and Neema Avashia. Author Cory Doctorow will be featured at the McCreight Lecture in the Humanities on October 19 at the University of Charleston. All events and programs are free and open to the public.

In addition to its featured speakers, the West Virginia Book Festival will also present a series of programs and workshops during the event. Four writing workshops and two additional Book Festival programs are scheduled on October 21st.

At 9 a.m. author Alica Fruhwaldova will hold a program, “The Intergenerational Tragedy of the Holocaust: A Personal Story of Survival & Loss”, while author Nora Shalaway Carpenter will present a workshop for aspiring writers, “Connecting Students to Writing by Reframing – Write What You Know”.

At 10 a.m., mystery novelist William Kent Krueger will discuss his career and his Cork O’Connor mystery series in the Festival’s Main Ballroom. Krueger’s last nine novels are all New York Times bestsellers.

From 11 a.m. to noon, West Virginia author Neema Avashia discusses the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality in her presentation “Another Appalachia: Growing up Queer & Indian in a Mountain Place”. Also, author Ashley Belote will hold her workshop - “From Concept to Publication: An Inside Look at Children’s Publishing”.

At 1 p.m., children’s author Sherri Duskey Rinker will kick off the afternoon activities in the Convention Center Ballroom. Rinker is the #1 New York Times bestselling children’s author of Steam Train, Dream Train and the Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site series. She is also the author of Revver the Speedway Squirrel and its sequel, a brand-new picture book series that kicks off with Roto and Roy: Helicopter Heroes, and a nonfiction picture book biography Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton, which received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist.

A pair of programs are scheduled for Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. Carter Taylor Seaton presents the writing workshop, “Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone”, and Michelle Mickle Foster’s program is devoted to non-profit fundraising - “Maximizing Impact: Success Strategies for Dynamic Nonprofits”.

Headlining author R.F. Kuang follows at 3 p.m. with “An Afternoon with R.F. Kuang” in the Convention Center’s Ballroom. Kuang is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History, as well as her latest novel Yellowface. Kuang won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2019 and has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards.

At 4 p.m., Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eric Eyre holds his writing workshop, “10 Lessons I’ve Learned Writing My First Book”. Eyre won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting and his book, Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, was published in 2020.

Novelist Mary Kay Andrews will close out the 2023 Book Festival with her presentation in the Main Ballroom, An Evening with Mary Kay Andrews, at 6 p.m. Andrews is the New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House Cookbook and more than twenty other novels, including The Weekenders, Ladies' Night, Spring Fever, Summer Rental, The Fixer Upper, Deep Dish, Blue Christmas, Savannah Breeze, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues.

On Thursday, October 19th, the West Virginia Humanities Council will present the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. This year’s distinguished speaker is author, journalist, and tech humanist Cory Doctorow. Doctorow, a 2020 inductee into the Canadian Science Fiction Hall of Fame, is the author of over two dozen books. The 2023 McCreight Lecture will be held at the University of Charleston's Geary Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.

The Book Festival Marketplace, featuring authors, publishers and literary-related vendors, will be open on Saturday from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. The Festival’s annual Used Book Sale will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the Children’s Word Play area will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Marketplace, Used Book Sale, and Word Play will be located in the Convention Center’s Grand Hall.

The West Virginia Book Festival is made possible by its charter presenters, The Kanawha County Public Library, The Library Foundation of Kanawha County, Inc., The West Virginia Humanities Council and The Charleston Gazette-Mail. Sponsors for this year’s festival include West Virginia Public Broadcasting, The West Virginia Library Commission, The West Virginia Center for the Book, The Marshall University Foundation, The Friends of The Library, Truist West Virginia Foundation, H.B. Wehrle Foundation, and the Nelle Ratrie Chilton Charitable Trust.

All activities are free and open to the public. For more information visit www.wvbookfestival.org.