This is the ninth Unbound Book Festival that Columbia has hosted and the festival keeps getting better and better. Emily St. John Mandel will be this year’s keynote speaker Friday, April 19, 2024 at The Missouri Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available through Unbound’s website and are, thankfully, free — as is the entire festival. Mandel is the author of our past 2015 One Read title, “Station Eleven” which was a finalist for a National Book award and a Pen/Faulkner award and won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Morning News Tournament of Books. It has also been made into an HBO mini-series. Mandel’s newest book is “Sea of Tranquility” which will take you on a journey across the Atlantic by steamship, across the Canadian wilderness, around the world, and to the moon.
The festival also features incredible author panels on so many topics. The panel, The Things They Created: Veteran Writers, will feature four writers who will explore how their military service informs their writing and perspectives. The panel, Let ‘em Cook, will feature three cookbook authors as they talk about food, family, culture and the social influences of sharing a meal. Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: A Literary Response to Gun Violence will be a three-author panel taking on the very weighty topic of gun violence. There is even a library-focused three-person panel, An Overdue Discussion, that will discuss the role that libraries play in communities. These are just some of the fantastic discussions that will be taking place.
But wait! There’s more! There is also a writer’s workshop that will take place at Stephen’s College on Sunday, April 14. So if you are a budding or even fully bloomed writer, be sure to register. You can submit the first page of an unpublished novel (ahead of the event) for review and critique. A five-judge panel will select five entries to post on the Unbound website to be evaluated and discussed at the workshop’s opening presentation. There will also be workshops including topics such as Truth Telling Through Poetry, How To Structure A Novel Before You Even Start Writing It, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Publishing (Or Writing) But Were Afraid to Ask.
Unbound also has their “Authors in Schools” project and Alan Gratz, a New York Times bestselling author, will be this year’s keynote speaker presenting to Columbia’s students at the Missouri Theatre on Friday, April 19. Gratz has written 19 novels and graphic novels for middle-grade readers. His most recent book is “Heroes: A Novel of Pearl Harbor” which follows 13-year-old Frank and his Japanese-American friend, Stanley. Both boys are the children of American service personnel at Pearl Harbor and, on December 7, they are on the USS Utah to watch a baseball match. They find themselves in the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbor. As a co-sponsor, the Daniel Boone Regional Library is also hosting an event with Gratz on Saturday, April 20 from 10:00-11:30 a.m. in the Friends Room titled “Alan Gratz – Black, White and Read All Over.” Other festival authors will be visiting classrooms on Friday, April 19 to discuss their work.
There will be so much to do and see during the festival. Hopefully, this list can give you a head start and help you figure out what is an absolute “must.”
Enjoy the festival!
Image credit: Bloxgros, Many Old Books via Wikimedia Commons (license)
