This is the fourth year for the Unbound Book Festival and it just gets bigger and better every year! I’m so grateful to be living in such a bookish town!
The keynote speaker this year is George Saunders, who will grace us at The Missouri Theater on April 19 at 7:30. Tickets were free (as is everything with the festival), but the space is limited so I hope you were able get yours back in January for this sold out event! If not, you can still try to get in last minute. Just show up a little early for the “no ticket” line. There are bound to be a few seats open. Saunder’s first novel length book, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” won the 2017 Man Booker Prize along with a fist full of other accolades. Our very own gentleman wrote about it in “The Gentleman Reccomends” blog series. He describes the book as “a fancy genius writer’s take on historical fiction, and it’s about, among other things, a brilliant president’s grief and a bunch of ghosts too scared and stubborn to move on from this realm, so they’re stuck in this one, in the same cemetery as Abraham Lincoln’s recently deceased son.” Saunder’s new book, “Fox 8,” is an environmental fable and has also received high praise.
Earlier in the day on Friday, from 4pm-6pm, there will be poetry readings at Cafe Berlin. According to the Unbound website, “The event will be MC’d by T’Keyah Thomas, who is on the Unbound programming committee. TK is a poet and community organizer living in Columbia, MO. She’s an on-air announcer and producer for KBIA and is the host and co-founder of the spoken word collective, OneMic.” Among the many poets performing will be Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Marc McKee.
Also on Friday, Unbound will go to school with the “Authors in the Schools” project for which the keynote speaker will by Jacqueline Woodson, author of the award winning book, “Brown Girl Dreaming.” She will be speaking to the district’s 8th graders at the Missouri Theater. Other participating authors, including Derrick Barnes, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jay Sexton, Javaka Steptoe, Karma Wilson and Deborah Zemke will be visiting various classrooms throughout Columbia.
Saturday, April 20, Stephens College campus will host many discussion panels. “Coming to America” will be a panel featuring 1st or 2nd generation immigrants discussing how national identity and immigration status have shaped their writing. They will also discuss how recent politics have effected them. The authors on this panel are Sarah Gambito, José Orduña and Natalia Sylvester. The panel, “Some Notes on Notes,” will feature authors who write about music and musicians and will include Wesely Brown, Kevin Coval, Donna Gaines and Joan Morgan. The panel, “Unbound Goes to the Movies,” will feature authors whose works are being adapted for the big screen. They will discuss what it feels like to watch their book be interpreted by others and whether they still recognize their own characters.
This panel will feature three authors whose books are at various stages of adaptation. Garrard Conley’s book, “Boy Erased,” has already been released. “My Salinger Year” by Joanna Rakoff is currently in pre-production. And finally, Amazon Studios has acquired the rights to “Lily and the Octopus” by Steven Rowley. Other panels will include “Writing the Rural,” “A Wonderful Town,” and “Prison Sentences” among others.
Also happening on Saturday will be many events and performances for kids, author conversations, events for writers and other special events, such as the regional Louder Than a Bomb poetry finals. There will also be many, many, many authors to sign your books if you are someone who likes to collect autographs of your favorite authors. And while the entire event is completely free to the public and run by a massive team of community volunteers, they do request that you bring gently used books to donate. These books will be distributed throughout the community where there is a need. And if you would like to see even more books and authors coming to Unbound this year, you can check out this list.
