A Sneak Peak at the 2023 Kansas Book Festival
The 12th annual Kansas Book Festival will occur Saturday, September 16 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., hosted by the Mabee Library at Washburn University. The Festival welcomes prominent authors from all genres including nonfiction, fiction, picture books, young adult novels, and poetry. The festival will include presentations by over 50 authors, as well as outdoor performances, food trucks, and exhibitor tents with publishers from around Kansas.
The 2023 headliner for the Kansas Book Festival is Ling Ma. This Washburn Rural High School alumnus released a new collection of short stories, Bliss Montage, last year, which consists of eight eccentric stories rooted in magical realism. The collection of stories has just been selected as the 2023 winner of the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. Her earlier novel Severance, an uncanny apocalyptic satire published before the onset of Covid, portrays a lethal pandemic that begins in China, spills over into New York City, and decimates all of North America. It was published in 2018 and was named a best book of the year by NPR.
Other notable authors include Candice Millard, a nonfiction writer with the nonfiction saga River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Chloe Cooper Jones with her memoir Easy Beauty, which chronicles a lifelong struggle with a deforming physical condition. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from two up-and-coming speculative fiction authors as well: Kenan Orhan, whose debut collection of fantastical short stories I Am My Country are set in the nation of Turkey, and John Elizabeth Stintzi, with the novel My Volcano, in which a volcano erupts in Central Park and soars a mile high. In addition, poet James Davis will be featured, along with his poetry collection Club Q, which follows a young gay boy growing up in Colorado Springs and highlights a club where a recent hate-based shooting occurred.
Parents and youth can expect entertainment too. Author Kathleen Wilford will share from her 2022 middle-grade novel Cabby Potts, Duchess of Dirt, set in the 1870s on the Kansas Prairie and told by a clever settler girl who must work as a housemaid. Lawrence resident Sarah Henning will be in attendance with three new books: a middle-grade novel titled Monster Camp, the realist YA novel Its All in How You Fall, and the fantasy YA novel The King Will Kill You.
The Kansas Book Festival is for guests of all ages. Keep an eye on the official Kansas Book Festival website for announcements of attending authors and other important details.
