Pulitzer Winner
RICHARD
RUSSO
International
Bestseller
JODI PICOULT
Poet
MARTÍN
ESPADA
Essayist
EULA BISS
Thriller Writer
SOPHIE
HANNAH
Orphan Train
Author
CHRISTINA
BAKER KLINE
The Fairfax County Public Library,
George Mason University, and the
George Mason University Bookstore present
September 11-18, 2014 G 703-993-3986 G www.fallforthebook.org
@fallforthebook #fallforthebook
Download the
new FftB app!
The printing of this program has been
underwritten by a generous grant from
Sweet Sixteen!
With a full decade and a half behind
us, Fall for the Book is well past
its coming of age, but we always
appreciate a good celebration—and
our 2014 festival offers plenty of
reasons to celebrate.
From some of the best-known and best-loved writers on the planet
to the literary stars of tomorrow, Fall for the Book welcomes a wide
range of authors and thinkers: novelists, poets, and playwrights;
essayists, critics, and memoirists; historians, biographers, and
journalists; and both children’s book and young adult authors—
providing something for all ages and interests and serving to bring
together a tightly knit community of readers from throughout the
region.
Highlights this year include the winners of Fall for the Book’s four
major awards:
G Novelist Jodi Picoult, recipient of the 2014 Mason Award,
which celebrates authors who have made an extraordinary
contribution to connecting literature to the wide reading
public • Friday, September 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall,
Center for the Arts, on George Mason’s University’s Fairfax, VA,
Campus
G Martín Espada, recipient of the 2014 Busboys and Poets
Award, presented to a contemporary poet and paying
tribute to Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the
Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., during the 1920s
before he gained recognition for his writing • Saturday,
September 13, at 5:30 p.m. in Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts, on Mason’s Fairfax Campus
G Essayist Eula Biss, recipient of the 2014 Mary Roberts
Rinehart Award, presented each year to a woman writer
specializing in nonfiction and commemorating the life and
work of Rinehart, who for 45 years prior to her death in
1958 was one of America’s most popular writers • Monday,
September 15, at 7:30 p.m. in Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts, on Mason’s Fairfax Campus.
G Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo, recipient
of the 2014 Fairfax Prize, sponsored by the Fairfax Library
Foundation and honoring outstanding literary achievement
as well as other contributions to the larger literary culture •
Wednesday, September 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Harris Theatre on
Mason’s Fairfax Campus.
Beyond those award-winners, the festival also welcomes
Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train, which has
become a book club sensation; Sophie Hannah, whose new
mystery The Monogram Murders marks the first time Agatha
Christie’s estate has authorized a book featuring Christie’s
characters; novelist Roxana Robinson and journalist David
Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur “Genius” Grant
recipient, discussing their writings on Iraq War veterans making
troubled returns to the homefront; a panel of experts including
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brigid Schulte, sociologist
Melissa Milkie, and psychologists Beth Cabrera and Todd
Kashdan talking about our overwhelmed, overworked lives;
and the second annual Haute Cuisine at the Hylton event,
featuring some of the region’s and nation’s leading cookbook
authors and food writers at Mason’s Prince William Campus—
with tastings!
You’ll find these events and so much more—over 150 authors in
all—in the pages ahead, with programs not only at the festival’s
base at George Mason University’s Fairfax, Virginia, campus,
but at nearly two dozen venues throughout Virginia, DC, and
Maryland.
Thanks to these partnering locations and to the generous support
of our sponsors, the festival continues to maintain high standards
of excellence and to fulfill its missions of
G Advancing children’s education and developmental skills
G Making literature fun
G Connecting readers and authors
G Building community
G Encouraging cultural diversity and awareness
BOOK SALES
George Mason University Libraries
Pohick Regional Library
Johnson Center, Rooms 234, 243, and 244,
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Thursday, September 11 and Friday, September
12, 10 a.m.–7 p.m.
6450 Sydenstricker Road, Burke, VA
Member Preview Sale: Thursday, November 6,
3–6 p.m.
G Friday, November 7, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
City of Fairfax Regional Library
G Saturday, November 8, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Adult Books: September 19–21 (no children’s
books)
G Friday, September 19, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Virginia Room Sale, with Civil War, Virginia history
and genealogy books: September 19-20 only,
hours above (no Sunday bag sale)
Burke Centre Library
5935 Freds Oak Road, Burke, VA
Member Preview Sale: Wednesday, September 17,
3–6 p.m.
Public sale:
G Thursday, September 18, 1–9 p.m.
G Friday, September 19, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
G Saturday, September 20, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
George Mason Regional Library
7001 Little River Turnpike, Annandale, VA
Thursday, September 25, 5–9 p.m.
Friday, September 26, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Saturday, September 27, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Sunday, September 28, noon–5 p.m.
For updated information, bookmark
www.fallforthebook.org or download
the new FftB app to get the latest
updates on what promises to be yet
another landmark year.
G Sunday, November 9, 1–4 p.m
Richard Byrd Library
7250 Commerce Street, Springfield, VA
Thursday, December 4 to Saturday, December 6
— check branch for hours.
G Saturday, September 20, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
G Sunday, September 21, 1–3 p.m. (Bag Day,
$5 per bag)
Oakton Library
10304 Lynnhaven Place, Oakton, VA
Thursday, October 16 to Saturday, October 18 —
check branch for hours.
www.fallforthebook.org
7:30 p.m.
Public Sale:
Monday, September 15, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
10360 North Street, Fairfax, VA
Children’s Books: Saturday, September 13,
10 a.m.–3 p.m.
PREVIEW EVENT:
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
EXHIBITIONS
Call and Response Collaborative
Exhibition: “In 24 hours, everywhere the
dawn rises again”
Fenwick Gallery, Fenwick Library
September 1–30; Gallery Talk, Wednesday,
September 17, 3–5 p.m.
Call & Response: a collaboration between writers
and visual artists, in which one calls and one
responds. The result is a set of paired works,
resonating with each other, demonstrating the
interplay of artistic media, and speaking of our
times. Call & Response is a collaboration between
George Mason University’s School of Art and the
university’s MFA program in poetry.
World War I Photographs from the Arthur
E. Scott Collection
Concert Hall Lobby, Center for the Arts
Throughout the Festival
A specially curated exhibit of World War
I-era photos, drawn from the Arthur E. Scott
photograph collection (Collection #C0096) in
the Special Collections and Archives section of
the George Mason University Libraries, marks
the centennial of the start of that war that was
supposed to be the war to end all wars.
Northern Virginia
j.talks: Naomi
Schaefer Riley
Location To Be
Announced
Why are young people
dropping out of religious
Naomi Schaefer
institutions? Can anything
Riley
be done to reverse the
trend? In Got Religion?: How Churches, Mosques,
and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back,
Riley—a former Wall Street Journal editor and
writer whose work focuses on higher education,
religion, philanthropy, and culture—examines
the reasons for the defection and how some
communities are successfully addressing the
problem. Riley is also the author of God on the
Quad and The Faculty
Lounges. Note: This
is a ticketed event.
Contact the JCCNV at
boxoffice@jccnv.org or
703.537.3000 for details.
Presented by the Jewish
Community Center of
Northern Virginia in
partnership with NOVA
Tribe.
Events take place in various buildings on
George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus,
4400 University Dr., Fairfax, Va., except where
otherwise indicated. All events are free, except
where noted. Download the FftB app to build
your personal schedule of event favorites!
1
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
Fall for the Book’s opening day commemorates in part the anniversary of the
September 11 terrorist attacks. In
addition to partnering with George Mason
University’s Day of Service—which
concludes with a candlelight vigil at
9:11 p.m. outside the Center for the
Arts—the festival also welcomes U.S.
Army veteran Luis Carlos Montalván, who
will reflect on the relationship between
wounded soldiers and service dogs, and
novelist Roxana Robinson and journalist
David Finkel in a joint appearance discussing veterans’ returns to the homefront.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
Book Award in Autobiography/
Memoir for his inspirational
memoir Until Tuesday: A
Wounded Warrior and the
Golden Retriever Who Saved
Him, which portrays the bond
between a man and his dog
during truly desperate times.
Sponsored by the Loudoun County Public Library.
Memoirist Anna WhistonDonaldson
Roxana Robinson
10 a.m.
Mason’s Day of Service Kick-Off
Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson Center Plaza
Fairfax Mayor R. Scott Silverthorne will be joined
by a member of Mason’s central administration
to thank the 2014 Mason Nation’s 9/11 Day
of Service community organizers, observe a
presentation of the colors by the Mason Army
ROTC Color Guard, and officially launch the day’s
festivities.
11 a.m.–1 p.m.
George Mason University’s Service Fair
Johnson Center North Plaza
Are you interested in getting involved in your
community? Meet with several local community
partners, discover various service opportunities,
and learn more about the issues facing our
immediate community. Sponsored by Mason’s
Social Action and Integrative Learning.
7 p.m.
Memoirist Luis Carlos
Montalván
Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford
Road NW, Leesburg, VA
The 17-year veteran of the U.S.
Luis Carlos
Montalván
Army, who served in multiple
combat tours in Iraq, won the USA Best
2
One More Page Books, 2200
N. Westmoreland Street, #101,
Arlington, VA
Twice named one of BlogHer’s
Voices of the Year, WhistonDonaldson is the author of
Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss
and Love, a mother’s story in
the face of unfathomable loss
and her journey of hope in the
aftermath.
7:30 p.m.
Novelist Roxana Robinson
and Journalist David Finkel
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Two great writers, two different
David Finkel
genres, one compelling subject.
Robinson’s latest novel, Sparta,
studies the estrangement of
an Iraq War vet trying to return
home to the country he’s been
fighting for. Thank You For
Your Service by David Finkel,
a Pulitzer Prize winner and
MacArthur “Genius” Grant
recipient, builds on his extensive research into the
challenges faced by American soldiers and their
families in war’s aftermath. Together, these writers
offer unique insight into one of today’s most
pressing issues.
Novelist and Historian Winston Groom
Pohick Regional Library, 6450 Sydenstricker Road,
Burke, VA
The author of Forrest Gump
brings his superior storytelling
skills to the tales of three great
pilots and their experiences
in World War II. The Aviators:
Winston Groom
Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy
Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh,
and the Epic Age of Flight charts the triumphs and
tragedies of these legendary men and celebrates
not just a dramatic era in the history of flight but
also the stellar achievements of that “greatest
generation.” Sponsored by the Friends of the
Pohick Regional Library.
Science Writers Sam Kean
and Carl Zimmer
The Alden at the McLean
Community Center, 1234
Ingleside Avenue, McLean, VA
Sam Kean
Frequent NPR guests Carl
Zimmer, New York Times
columnist and author of books
including Evolution: Making
Sense of Life, and Sam Kean,
author of books including
The Tale of the Dueling
Neurosurgeons: The History of
the Human Brain as Revealed by
True Stories of Trauma, Madness,
and Recovery, discuss topics in
popular science and read from
their works. Sponsored by the
Fairfax County Public Library and
the McLean Community Center.
Carl Zimmer
9 p.m.
Mason Nation 9/11 Day of Service:
Candlelight Ceremony
Mason Pond, Outside Center for the Arts
A candle will be lit for each of the 2,977 victims
who perished in the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the United States. A moment of silence
will be observed at 9:11 p.m. to remember the
victims. The candlelight vigil is a tradition organized
by Fourth Estate, Mason’s student news outlet,
and is the official closing program for the Mason
Nation 9/11 Day of Service.
fall for the book festival 2014
10:30 a.m.
Playwright Julia Jarcho
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
The OBIE Award-winning
playwright and director
discusses the craft of
Julia Jarcho
playwriting with specific
attention to her work Grimly Handsome. A staged
reading of the play will take place at 8 p.m. in
Harris Theatre, featuring actors from the original
production.
Noon
Historian Tim Grove
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
In A Grizzly in the Mail and
Tim Grove
Other Adventures in American
History, the chief of museum
learning at the National Air
and Space Museum offers
behind-the-scene perspectives
on some landmark historical
monuments—and moments—
of American history as he visits
sites such as Harpers Ferry,
Fort McHenry, the Ulm Pishkun buffalo jump,
and the Lemhi Pass on the Lewis and Clark Trail,
and traverses time and space from 18th-century
Williamsburg to the 21st-century Kennedy
Space Center, and from Cape Canaveral on the
Atlantic to Cape Disappointment on the Pacific.
Sponsored by Mason’s Department of History and
Art History.
1:30 p.m.
Memoirist Kristin
Battista-Frazee
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Kristin BattistaFrazee
In The Pornographer’s
Daughter: A Memoir of
Childhood, My Father, and Deep Throat,
Battista-Frazee—whose father Anthony Battista
was indicted by the federal government for
www.fallforthebook.org
distributing the now famous
porn film Deep Throat—offers
an insider’s glimpse into the
events that made pornography
so popular and reveals what
it was like to come of age
against the backdrop of the
pornography business.
3 p.m.
Defying Gravity Panel
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Elizabeth Word Gutting,
Veronica Li, Mary Claire
Mahaney, Judith O’Neill,
Valerie O. Patterson, and Sally Toner share
their contributions to Defying Gravity, the sixth
anthology in the Grace & Gravity series of fiction
by Washington, DC-area women, published by
Paycock Press and edited by Richard Peabody. The
Washington Independent Review of Books praised
the collection’s “ear for witness over comfort or
safety. And like the author party that Peabody
imagines in the introduction, in that gathering
of witnesses and testimony there’s a deep
satisfaction.” Moderated by Beth Konkoski.
4:30 p.m.
Novelist Catherine Bell
Catherine Bell
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
The Winner of the Washington
Writers Publishing House
Fiction Prize, Bell’s Rush of
Shadows explores the clash
between natives and settlers in
19th century California through
the unlikely friendship of two
women, one white, one Indian.
Children’s Book Author Chris
Grabenstein
Burke Centre Library, 5935 Freds Oak Road,
Burke, VA
The multiple Anthony and
Agatha Award-winning author
shares his new puzzle mystery,
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s
Library, which plunks a dozen
Chris Grabenstein
sixth-graders into the middle
of a futuristic library for a night
of nonstop fun and adventure.
With a judicious nod toward
Roald Dahl’s classic Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory,
Grabenstein’s latest has already
won him another Agatha and is
a finalist for this year’s Anthony
for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel. Sponsored
by the Friends of the Burke Centre Library.
7:30 p.m.
MASON AWARD
PRESENTATION:
Jodi Picoult
Concert Hall, Center for
the Arts
Novelist Jodi Picoult accepts the 2014
Mason Award, celebrating authors who
have made an extraordinary contribution to
connecting literature to the wide reading
public. Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times
bestselling author of twenty-one novels;
her upcoming book, Leaving Time, will be
published in October. In addition to her
writing, Picoult works with a number of
charity organizations to encourage reading
and both artistic and athletic activities,
including the Writer’s Council for the
National Writing Project, Positive Tracks/
Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, and the
the Trumbull Hall Troupe, a New Hampshirebased teen theater group
that performs original
musicals to raise money
for local charities.
Sponsored by George
Mason University
Libraries.
3
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 continued
8 p.m.
Staged Reading:
Grimly Handsome
Harris Theatre
OBIE Award-winning
playwright Julia Jarcho directs a staged reading
of her play Grimly Handsome, featuring actors
Jenny Seastone Stern, Pete Simpson, and Ben
Williams, who appeared in the original production
at the Incubator Arts Project at New York’s St.
Mark’s Church.
Old Firestation Poetry
Reading
Timothy Donnelly
Dorothea Lasky
Old Firestation #3, 3988
University Drive, Fairfax, VA
A long-time tradition at Fall
for the Book, the annual Old
Firestation reading welcomes
the best and brightest young
poets to the stage. This year’s
event features three fabulous
up-and-coming poets: Timothy
Donnelly, author of Twentyseven Props for a Production
of Eine Lebenszeit and The
Cloud Corporation, which the
Poetry Foundation praised
for its “mix of sprawling,
cinematic subjects and literary
traditions”; Dorothea Lasky,
author of four full-length
collections, AWE, Black Life,
Thunderbird, and Rome, and
praised by The Huffington Post
as “undoubtedly one of the
nation’s most talented younger
poets”; and Roger Reeves,
whose debut collection King Me
was praised as “sophisticated
and breathtaking” by the Los
Angeles Review of Books.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
Fiction Writers Nathan
Leslie and Pat Spears
The Writer’s Center, 4508
Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD
Northern Virginia Community
Nathan Leslie
College professor Leslie is
the author of eight books of
fiction, including his new story
collection Sibs, which Gargoyle
founder Richard Peabody called
“twenty-one stories that read
like The Odyssey on Oxycontin.”
Spears’
novel Dream
Chaser, follows a suddenly
single father struggling to build
a better relationship with his
three children and continues
Pat Spears
the author’s passion for
capturing “the marginal voices
of men and women whose
lives often teeter on the edge
of human disaster and social
acceptability.”
11:30 a.m.
Loud Fire Reading
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
The graduate student reading series for Mason’s
MFA program presents a selection of readers from
the current ranks of creative writing students.
Novelist Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Arts Plaza Tent, Outside Center
for the Arts
The author of The Effects of
Light and Set Me Free scores
big with her third novel,
Bittersweet, an instant critical
and popular success which
Library Journal praised as “a
suspenseful tale of corruption
and bad behavior among
wealthy New Englanders” and
which Entertainment Weekly
compared to Gone Girl “with
its exploration of dark secrets
and edge-of-your-seat twists.”
Miranda BeverlyWhittemore
Crime Writers Kate Flora and Neely
Tucker
Mason Hall Tent, Outside Center for the Arts
Flora, former assistant attorney general for
the State of Maine and the author of twelve
books, both novels and true crime, explores how
authorities from New Brunswick, Canada, and
Spend the weekend at Fall for the Book!
As events continue throughout the region all weekend, Fall for the Book is also settling in
for two day-long series of events in a true festival atmosphere on Saturday and Sunday. On
Saturday, fifteen events take place at the Center for the Arts and on the Arts Plaza on Mason’s
Fairfax Campus—featuring fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by some of the most brilliant writers
of our day, a book fair of local literary journals and presses, and food trucks on the front drive;
Saturday parking is free in Mason’s Lot K near the event sites. Then on Sunday, the focus shifts
to the rich and diverse world of writing today—romance, self-publishing, and one of the
biggest book club sensations of the year—with most events at the Sherwood Center, 3740 Old
Lee Highway, in the City of Fairfax; parking there is also free. Come for one event or enjoy the
full day!
Roger Reeves
4
fall for the book festival 2014
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 continued
Maine collaborated to catch
a suspected serial killer in
Death Dealer: How Cops and
Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer
to Justice. Tucker, a Washington
Kate Flora
Post reporter, drew on the
1990s Princeton Place murders
for his debut novel, The Ways
of the Dead, which takes an
investigative journalist from the
highest halls of DC power to the
city’s seediest
underbelly.
Where do fact and fiction
collide or converge? Two writers
working in each genre offer
first-hand perspectives.
Neely Tucker
Novelist Allegra Jordan
Arts Plaza Tent, Outside Center
for the Arts
An innovation consultant
who has led marketing at
Allegra Jordan
USAToday.com, handled
crisis communications for the
Enron investigation, and codeveloped a Google Glass app,
Jordan offers a debut novel,
The End of Innocence, about
an American student and a
German poet who meet at
Harvard on the eve of World War I and then find
their new relationship challenged as the war’s
demands escalate.
Novelist Louis Bayard
Novelist Susan Coll
Susan Coll
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
The author of Acceptance and
Beach Week returns with The
Stager, a comedy of rabbits
and real estate in the D.C.
suburbs that Washingtonian
praised as “not a plain parody
of suburban dysfunction but
the work of a very good comic
novelist subverting conventional structure and perspective.”
Novelist Ed Falco
Mason Hall Tent, Outside
Center for the Arts
Fresh on the heels of his
bestselling book The Family
Ed Falco
Corleone,
a prequel to Mario Puzo’s The
Godfather, Falco delves into
another story of gangsters in
the Great Depression, Toughs,
based in part on real-life
characters and historical events.
www.fallforthebook.org
2:30 p.m.
Short-Story Writers
Rebecca Lee and
Laura van den Berg
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Lee, a professor of creative writing at the University of North
Carolina at Wilmington and the
author of novel The City Is a Rising Tide, shares a selection from
her new book of short stories,
Bobcat, which bestselling novelist Ben Fountain likened to “the
unflinching, cumulatively devastating precision of Chekhov
and Munro, peeling back layer
after layer of illusion until we’re
left with the truth of ourselves.”
Van den Berg’s latest collecLaura van den Berg
tion, The Isle of Youth—which
explores the lives of vulnerable,
dangerous, and unforgettable
women—has been named a
“Best Book of 2013” by more
than a dozen venues, including
NPR, The Boston Globe, and O,
The Oprah Magazine.
Rebecca Lee
2 p.m.
1 p.m.
began her own research into
the science of sound, language
acquisition, brain plasticity, and
deaf culture. The result, I Can
Hear You Whisper: An Intimate
Journey through the Science
of Sound and Language, was
praised by People magazine
as “painstakingly researched and emotionally
charged.” Sponsored by the Oakton Library Friends.
Richard Byrd Library, 7250
Commerce Street, Springfield,
VA
Louis Bayard
Having ascended to the
“the upper reaches of the
historical-thriller league”
(Washington Post) for literary
thrillers including The Pale
Blue Eye, The Black Tower, and
The School of Night, Bayard
ups the ante further with
Roosevelt’s Beast, a taut tale about president
Teddy Roosevelt and his son on a legendarily
ill-fated expedition to the Amazon—and tasked
with tracking an elusive beast terrorizing a local
Amazonian tribe. Sponsored by the Friends of the
Richard Byrd Library.
Memoirist and Science
Writer Lydia Denworth
Oakton Library, 10304
Lynnhaven Place, Oakton, VA
When her two-year-old
Lydia Denworth
son was diagnosed with a
significant and progressive hearing loss, journalist
Denworth—a former Newsweek reporter and
professor of journalism at Fordham University—
Events take place in various buildings on
George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus,
4400 University Dr., Fairfax, Va., except where
otherwise indicated. All events are free, except
where noted. Download the FftB app to build
your personal schedule of event favorites!
5
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 continued
2:30 p.m.
Poets Betsy Andrews
and Jen Coleman
Arts Plaza Tent, Center for
the Arts
Two alumni of Mason’s MFA
Betsy Andrews
program share selections of
poetry—
Andrews
from collections
including
The Bottom,
Jen Coleman
winner of
the 42 Miles Press Poetry Prize,
and New Jersey, winner of the
Brittingham Prize in Poetry,
and Coleman from her first
full-length collection, Psalms for
Dogs and Sorcerers.
Literary Critic Maureen
Corrigan
Mason Hall Tent, Center for
the Arts
Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s
“Fresh Air” and a regular
Maureen Corrigan
reviewer for The Washington
Post, takes on one of the great
masterpieces of American
literature in So We Read On:
How The Great Gatsby Came
to Be and Why It Endures—
exploring “Gatsby’s surprising
debt to hard-boiled crime
fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a ‘classic,’
and its profound commentaries on the national
themes of race, class, and gender.”
punch in 2014, delivering
critically acclaimed works
in two genres. Her debut
novel, An Untamed State,
traces the harrowing physical
and emotional journey of a
Haitian woman kidnapped for
ransom, and her first collection
of essays, Bad Feminist, cements her place as
a keen-eyed social and cultural critic. As Time
Out New York wrote, “Alternately friendly and
provocative, wry and serious, [Gay’s] takes on
everything from Girls to Fifty Shades of Grey help
to recontextualize what feminism is—and what
it can be.” Sponsored by Mason’s African and
African American Studies.
Gazing Grain Chapbook
Reading
Arts Plaza Tent, Center for the
Arts
Gazing Grain Press, a project
of Fall for the Book and alumni
Anne Lesley Selcer
of Mason’s MFA program,
honors Anne Lesley Selcer, whose collection
from A Book of Poems on Beauty won the press’s
third annual poetry chapbook contest, selected
by judge Dawn Lundy Martin. Kevin McLellan,
whose manuscript Before the Door was the
runner-up, will also share a
selection from his work. This
reading celebrates inclusive
feminist poetry and promotes
socially conscious work in
today’s literary community. A
Kevin McLellan
reception follows the reading.
Sponsored by Gazing Grain Press.
Novelist Bruce Holsinger
4 p.m.
Novelist and Essayist
Roxane Gay
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Gay has delivered a one-two
6
Bruce Holsinger
Roxane Gay
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 continued
Mason Hall Tent, Center for
the Arts
Holsinger, a professor of
English at the University
of Virginia, draws on his
scholarship in medieval
literature to craft his debut
historical thriller, A Burnable
Book, in which Geoffrey
Chaucer tasks fellow poet John
Gowar with tracking down “a
seditious work that threatens
the stability of the realm.”
Washington Post critic Ron Charles proclaimed,
“Puzzlemeisters will love this.”
5:30 p.m.
BUSBOYS AND
POETS AWARD
PRESENTATION:
Martín Espada
Grand Tier III, Center for
the Arts
Martín Espada will
accept the 2014 Busboys and Poets
Award, presented to a contemporary poet
in conjunction with Busboys and Poets, a
restaurant, bookstore, fair trade market, and
gathering place based in Washington, DC;
the award pays tribute to Langston Hughes,
who worked as a busboy at the Wardman
Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., during the
1920s before he gained recognition for his
writing. Espada has published more than
fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist, and
translator. His latest collection of poems,
The Trouble Ball, is the recipient of the Milt
Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award
and an International Latino Book Award.
His previous book of poems, The Republic of
Poetry, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s
Latino community, Espada is currently a
professor in the Department of English at
the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Sponsored by Busboys and Poets.
fall for the book festival 2014
5:30 p.m.
Novelist Bret Anthony Johnston
Mason Hall Tent, Center for the Arts
Johnston, director of creative writing at Harvard,
is the author of the novel Remember Me Like
This, a Barnes and Noble
Discover Great New Writers
selection, and the awardwinning Corpus Christi: Stories,
which was named a Best Book
of the Year by The Independent
(London) and The Irish Times.
7 p.m.
Stillhouse Press: The Salon
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Stillhouse Press, a new
publishing venture recently
launched by Mason’s MFA
Program in Creative Writing,
hosts a literary salon, highlighting new literary
works in a blend of reading and conversation. A
7 p.m. reception (see suggested donation below)
precedes a 7:30 p.m. conversation featuring
Roxane Gay, author of the debut novel An
Untamed State and the essay
collection Bad Feminist; Ronna
Wineberg, author of the
debut novel On Bittersweet
Place, published by Northern
Virginia-based independent
Ronna Wineberg
publisher Relegation Books;
and Mary Kay Zuravleff,
reading from Helen on 86th
Street and Other Stories, the
forthcoming debut of local
writer Wendi Kaufman,
and the first book from
Stillhouse Press. Independent
public relations representative and consultant
Lauren Cerand hosts this latest installment of
the Stillhouse Sessions cultural series, featuring
the best in locally produced culture and craft
publishing, in combination with nationallyrecognized talent and timeless storytelling.
www.fallforthebook.org
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
Admission to the reception requires a suggested
donation of $20 ($10 for students) for food,
drink, and a Stillhouse tote bag; proceeds benefit
Stillhouse Press.
8 p.m.
Fall for the Book: Nightfall
Party Room Adjacent to One
More Page Books, 2200 N.
Terry Irving
Westmoreland Street, #101,
Arlington, VA
In the spirit of the Noir at the Bar
events taking place nationwide, Fall
for the Book joins One More Page
Books in hosting an after-hours
Dana King
party with area writers working
at the darker end of the suspense
spectrum, not just edge-of-your
seat thrilling but unnervingly
edgy as well. Participants include
Nik Korpon
Bruce Holsinger, author of A
Burnable Book; Terry Irving,
author of Courier; Dana King,
whose A Small Sacrifice is currently
a finalist for this year’s Shamus
Laura Ellen
Scott
Awards; Nik Korpon, author
of Stay God, Sweet Angel; Elisa
Nader, whose Escape From Eden
was a finalist for the 2014 Thriller
Awards; Laura Ellen Scott,
Kieran Shea
author of Death Wish-ing; Kieran
Shea, author of Koko Takes a
Holiday; and Steve Weddle,
author of Country Hardball. E.A.
Aymar, author of I’ll Sleep When
Steve Weddle
You’re Dead, emcees the evening’s
entertainment. Also at your service:
Professor Cocktail, aka David
J. Montgomery,
author of Zombie
Horde and the
E. A. Aymar
forthcoming Classic
Cocktails, among other bar guides. David J.
Montgomery
12:30 p.m.
Falling for the Story Reading
Sherwood Center Rehearsal Room, 3740 Old Lee
Highway, Fairfax, VA
A hallmark of each year’s festival, the annual
Falling for the Story event features the literary
stars of tomorrow—student writers sharing
original works published in Falling for the
Story, Northern Virginia Writing Project’s
yearly anthology of exemplary work from local
elementary, middle, and high schools, published
by Fall for the Book. Sponsored by the Northern
Virginia Writing Project.
1:30 p.m.
Children’s Authors Jamey
Long and Katrina Moore
Sherwood Center Rehearsal
Room, 3740 Old Lee Highway,
Fairfax VA
Long is the author of the
popular Possum’s History and
Holiday series, whose recent
titles include A Possum’s
Expedition: Lewis & Clark and
Sacagawea. Moore’s debut
book is So Long Gnop-Jiye, a
heartwarming story about a
child’s journey from China to
the United States.
Katrina Moore
2 p.m.
Retail Historian Michael
Lisicky
Old Town Hall, 3999 University
Drive, Fairfax, VA
Drawing on his own personal
archive of newspaper
Michael Lisicky
stories about department
stores—perhaps the largest such resource in
the country—Lisicky has already penned books
about Gimbels, Wanamaker’s, Hutzler’s, and more,
and now he turns his attention to Woodward &
Lothrop: A Store Worthy of the Nation’s Capital—
7
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 continued
featuring interviews with store
insiders, vintage photographs,
and time-tested recipes.
Sponsored by the Fairfax
Museum and Visitor Center.
Virginia Romance Writers:
Unconventional Love
Madeline Iva
Historical Novelist
Pamela Bauer Mueller
Reston Regional Library, 11925 Bowman Towne
Drive, Reston, VA
The three-time Georgia Author of the Year has
already earned three more
awards for her latest historical
novel, Lady Unveiled: Catherine
Greene Miller, 1755-1814. The
dramatic story of how the wife
Pamela Bauer
of Revolutionary War General
Mueller
Nathanael Greene became
instrumental in the invention of
the cotton gin won the regional
literature category at the 2014
Great Southeast Book Festival,
the Wild Care category at the
San Francisco Book Festival,
and the Young Adult category
at the New York Book Festival.
Novelist Carla Buckley
Rust Library, 380 Old
Waterford Road NW,
Leesburg, VA
The author of The Things
That Keep Us Here, a Thriller
Carla Buckley
Award finalist, and Invisible
returns with The Deepest
Secret, about a mother who
will go to all lengths necessary
to protect a son afflicted with
a rare medical condition.
People called it “smart and
thrilling” and Publisher’s
Weekly gave it a starred
review for its “intricate suspense and surprise of
a thriller, along with rich characterizations and
nuanced writing.” Sponsored by the Loudoun
County Public Library.
8
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 continued
Laura Kaye
Tracey Livesay
Carl Riden
Shara Lanel
Sherwood Center Art Room, 3740
Old Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA
The first of two discussions
hosted in conjunction with
the local chapter of Romance
Writers of America explores
what romance suggests about
a changing America. Panelists
include Madeline Iva, whose
novella “Sexsomnia” appears
in Lady Smut’s Book of Dark
Desires; Laura Kaye, author of
a dozen books of paranormal
romance and romantic suspense,
including Hard to Hold on To;
Tracey Livesay, author of The
Tycoon’s Socialite Bride; and Carl
Riden, professor of sociology at
Longwood University and author
of Reading Women’s Lives: An
Introduction to Women’s Studies.
Moderated by Shara Lanel,
whose ten novels include Icy
Seduction.
3 p.m.
The Craft of Suspense
The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh
Street, Bethesda, MD
James Grady
How do writers create suspense
in their novels? Why are we
compelled to stay up late at night,
turning pages? Going beyond clichéd plotlines—the smoking gun
and the ticking bomb—writers
Allison Leotta
create suspense through structure,
language, characters, and places.
Four acclaimed
suspense writers
discuss the craft
A. X. Ahamd
that underlies their
work: James Grady, Mad Dogs;
Bethanne
Patrick
Allison Leotta, Speak of the
3:30 p.m.
Devil; Ed Falco, Toughs; and A.X. Ahmad, The
Last Taxi Ride. The discussion will be moderated
by Bethanne Patrick.
The Secrets of
Self-Publishing
Sherwood Center Rehearsal Room,
3740 Old Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA Mary Buford
Hitz
Get a detailed look
inside the world of
self-publishing: the
mechanics, pros,
cons, and challenges
Elaine C. Jean
Paul N. Jean
of producing and
marketing your
book. Panelists include Mary Buford Hitz,
author of Riding to Camille: A Novel of Love
and Perseverance through One of Virginia’s
Most Devastating Storms; Elaine C. Jean
and Paul N. Jean, author and
photographer of Carpe Weekend:
52 Day Trips and Adventures
near Washington, DC; and
Nevin Martell, author of Freak
Nevin Martell
Show without a Tent: Swimming
with Piranhas, Getting Stoned in
Fiji and Other Family Vacations.
Moderated by Meredith
Maslich, CEO of Possibilities
Meredith
Maslich
Publishing Company.
Novelist Ronna Wineberg
Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia,
8900 Little River Turnpike, Fairfax, VA
Wineberg is the author of the collection Second
Language—winner of the New Rivers Press
Many Voices Project Literary Competition and
runner-up for the 2006 Reform Judaism Prize for
Jewish Fiction—and the novel On Bittersweet
Place, published by Northern Virginia-based
Relegation Books and following the coming of
age of a young Russian Jew whose family flees
their homeland in the Ukraine after the October
Revolution.
fall for the book festival 2014
Virginia Romance Writers:
From Sweet to Heat
Gail Barrett
Lori Dillon
Terri Osburn
Pamela Palmer
Pamela Palmer
Hope Ramsay
Sherwood Center Art Room, 3740
Old Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA
The second discussion hosted
in conjunction with the local
chapter of Romance Writers of
America examines how romance
authors deal with love and lust
on the page. Panelists include
Gail Barrett, winner of RWA’s
Golden Heart Award and author
of thirteen novels, most recently
A Kiss to Die For and Seduced by
His Target; Alexa Day, whose
debut Illicit Impulse was a finalist
in the erotica category for the
2014 EPIC E-Book awards; Lori
Dillon, whose novel Fire of the
Dragon was an Amazon Time
Travel Romance bestseller; Terri
Osburn, a Golden Heart finalist
who writes the Anchor Island
contemporary romance series;
Pamela Palmer, the author of
sixteen novels including both
the Vamp City and Feral Warriors
series; and Hope Ramsay, twotime Golden Heart finalist and
author most recently of Inn at Last
Chance.
4:30 p.m.
Young Adult Books: Now and Then
One More Page Books, 2200 N. Westmoreland
Street, #101, Arlington, VA
Award-winning writers of YA fiction discuss their
recent works, their readers, and the growing YA
market—and tackle that persistent question of
whether adults should be reading YA at all. Gigi
Amateau’s last novel, Come August, Come
Freedom: The Bellows, the Gallows, and the Black
General Gabriel, won the 2013 Library of Virginia
www.fallforthebook.org
People’s Choice Award and was
named a 2013 Jefferson Cup
Honor Book. Edwin Fontanez
draws on magical realism to craft
Gigi Amateau
his novel The Illuminated Forest,
about a 12-year-old returning to
his grandparents’ island in the
wake of family tragedy. Kristen
Lippert-Martin’s debut novel,
Tabula Rasa, is a sci-fi thriller
Edwin Fontanez
about a young girl fighting to
retain snatches of her past after
a memory elimination procedure.
Meg Medina received the 2013
CYBILS fiction award and the
Kristen LippertMartin
2014 Pura Belpré Author Award
for her newest young adult novel,
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick
Your Ass. And A.B. Westrick’s
Brotherhood—the story of a
Meg Medina
young boy’s coming of age during
Post-Civil War Reconstruction—is
an ALA/YALSA 2014 Best Book for
Young Adults, won
the NCSS 2014
A. B. Westrick
Notable Trade Book
Award, and was named a Jane
Addams 2014 honor book for
older readers.
6:30 p.m.
Virginia Opera Outreach Director Glenn
Winters
Sherwood Center Main Hall, 3740 Old Lee
Highway, Fairfax, VA
As part of Virginia’s Operation Opera—the
largest opera education program in America—
Winters, Virginia Opera’s community outreach
musical director and author of The Opera Zoo:
Singers, Composers, and Other Primates, offers
enhanced perspectives on this extraordinary art
form for both long-time enthusiasts and firsttime attendees. Sponsored by the City of Fairfax
Commission on the Arts.
Poet Linda Hogan
Busboys and Poets, 1025 5th
Street, NW, Washington, DC
Split This Rock, the DC-based
organization that calls poets to
a greater role in public life and Linda Hogan
fosters a national network of
socially engaged poets, hosts
Chickasaw poet Hogan for a
reading and discussion of her
work, including poems from
her latest collection, Dark.
Sweet. New and Selected
Poems. Please note that this
is a ticketed event: $5 per person, with proceeds
benefitting Split This Rock.
5:00 p.m.
Novelist Christina Baker Kline
Sherwood Center Main Hall, 3740 Old Lee Hwy, Fairfax, VA
The author of five novels, Kline discusses her #1 New York Times bestseller,
the Depression-era Orphan Train, a powerful tale of
upheaval and resilience about a young Irish immigrant
who, as a child, is sent away from New York on a train
that regularly transported unwanted and abandoned children from the East
Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest. Kirkus called the book a “dramatic,
emotional story from a neglected corner of American history,” and Publisher’s
Weekly praised it as “a heartfelt page-turner.” Sponsored by the Fairfax Library
Foundation.
9
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
Noon
Short Story Writer Kevin
Clouther
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Clouther, a creative writing
professor at Stony Brook
Kevin Clouther
University and at Johns
Hopkins, shares a story from
his debut collection, We Were
Flying to Chicago—which
prompted Booklist to call him
“an ‘old’ talent—meaning,
his sophistication in treatment
and technique and his wise
observations of the human condition have the
feel of an author who has the experience of
several story collections behind him.”
1:30 p.m.
Novelist Alan Michael
Parker
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Parker, a professor at Davidson
College and winner of the
North Carolina Book Award,
among other honors, offers
99 linked stories about
disappearing townsfolk in his
latest book, The Committee on
Town Happiness, which Pulitzer
Prize winner Robert Olen
Butler praised as “smart and
funny and oddly touching and
ravishingly beautiful.”
Alan Michael
Parker
2:15 p.m.
Architect and Novelist
Charles Belfoure
Charles Belfoure
10
Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute, 4210 Roberts Road,
Fairfax, VA
Belfoure’s The Paris Architect—
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 continued
named a “must-read” by the
New York Post—details the
work of a gentile architect
devising hiding places for Jews
in occupied Paris during World
War II. Sponsored by Osher
Lifelong Learning Institute.
her World War II trilogy with
Across a War-Tossed Sea, the
tale of two London boys who
escape the Blitz by travelling to
Virginia—only to find that the
war has crossed the Atlantic as
well, with U-boats just off the
coast and Nazi POWS right around the corner.
3 p.m.
Medical Ethicist Sigrid
Fry-Revere
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
The founder and president of
the Center for Ethical Solutions,
Sigrid Fry-Revere
who has taught bioethics and
law at the University of Virginia
and George Mason University,
became the first Westerner to
witness firsthand Iran’s organ
procurement system. In The
Kidney Sellers: A Journey of
Discovery in Iran, she delves
deep into Iranian culture to examine the medical
ethics of compensating organ donors.
Young Adult Novelists
L.M. Elliott and Kathryn
Erskine
Robinson High School, 5035
Sideburn Road, Fairfax, VA
Erskine, whose novel
Mockingbird won the National
Book Award and whose last
novel Seeing Red recently
earned an honorable mention
for the Library of Virginia’s
2014 Literary Awards, steps
back to the Middle Ages for
her newest book, The Badger
Knight, about 13-year old boy
who runs off to battle to prove
he’s a man. Elliott, author of
Under A War-Torn Sky and A
Troubled Peace, completes
4:30 p.m.
Nonfiction Writer Angie
Chuang
Mason Global Center Ballroom
Chuang, a professor of
journalism at the American
Angie Chuang
University School of
Communication, took on a
daunting assignment in the
weeks after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks: “find the human face
of the country we’re about to
bomb.” Her five-year journey
into the lives of the Shirzai
family from Afghanistan also
leads her into an examination of her own family
of immigrants from Taiwan, their history and their
troubled place in the shadow of the American
Dream. Sponsored by INTO Mason.
Poet Linda Hogan
L. M. Elliott
Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson Center Plaza
The Chickasaw poet, former Writer in Residence
for The Chickasaw Nation, and Professor Emerita
from the University of Colorado shares selections
from her work, including poems from her latest
collection, Dark. Sweet. New and Selected Poems.
Sponsored by Split This Rock.
6 p.m.
Novelists—and Twins!—Richard and
Robert Bausch
Kathryn Erskine
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Fall for the Book is pleased to host a very rare joint
reading by undoubtedly the most famous writing
fall for the book festival 2014
twins in the nation. Richard
Bausch—winner of the PEN/
Malamud Award, the Literature
Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters,
Richard Bausch
and the Rea Award for the Short
Story and a former Mason MFA
professor—reads from his new
novel Before, During, After, the
tale of a troubled love affair
amidst the backdrop of the
9/11 attacks. Robert Bausch—
winner of
the John
Dos Passos Award in Literature
and a longtime professor at
Northern Virginia Community
Robert Bausch
College—samples his
forthcoming novel Far as the
Eye Can See, which explores
another relationship in the
aftermath of national tragedy:
a white man and a mixed-race
woman struggling to find some
shared humanity in the years
after the U.S. Civil War.
7 p.m.
Biographer Marc Leepson
Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford
Road NW, Leesburg, VA
The prolific biographer
and historian, who has
Marc Leepson
written about the Marquis
de Lafayette, Confederate
General Jubal Early’s march on
Washington, Monticello, and
the history of the American
Flag, will read and discuss his
latest work, What So Proudly
We Hailed: Francis Scott Key,
A Life, the first biography of
the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in
more than seventy-five years. Sponsored by the
Loudoun County Public Library.
www.fallforthebook.org
7:30 p.m.
MARY ROBERTS
RINEHART AWARD
PRESENTATION:
Eula Biss
Grand Tier III, Center for
the Arts
Eula Biss will receive this year’s Mary Roberts
Rinehart Award, presented each year to a
woman writer specializing in nonfiction; the
award commemorates the life and work of
Rinehart, who for 45 years prior to her death
in 1958 was one of America’s most popular
writers. Biss is the author most recently
of On Immunity: An Inoculation, which
“investigates the metaphors and myths
surrounding our conception of immunity
and its implications for the individual and
the social body” and tackles the question
“Why do we fear vaccines?” Previous books
include The Balloonists and Notes from
No Man’s Land: American Essays, which
received the Graywolf
Press Nonfiction Prize and
won the 2009 National
Book Critics Circle Award
for Criticism. Sponsored by
the Mary Roberts Rinehart
Foundation.
7:30 p.m.
Poets Karla Kelsey and Brian Teare
Research Building I, Room 163
Kelsey is the author of four books of poetry:
Knowledge, Forms, The Aviary; Iteration Nets;
and A Conjoined Book, which continues the lyric
investigation of her first two books. Teare is the
author of four critically acclaimed books as well:
The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, the
Lambda Award-winning Pleasure, and Companion
Grasses, one of Slate’s best poetry books of
2013 and a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award.
Sponsored by Mason’s Creative Writing Program.
10:30 a.m.
Historian Peter Stearns
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Editor-in-chief of The Journal
of Social History since 1967,
professor of history at George
Mason University since 2000,
and former Mason provost,
Stearns has authored or edited
more than 125 books, most
recently Peace in World History,
in which he examines how
societies throughout history
have sought peace. Sponsored
by Mason’s Department of
History and Art History.
Peter Stearns
Noon
Historian Alan Rems
Alan Rems
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Rems was selected as the
Author of the Year by the U.S.
Naval Institute in 2008 for his
article about the mysterious
death of a Marine general in
the South Pacific in 1943. The
research he did for that article
eventually led him to his first
book, South Pacific Cauldron:
World War II’s Great Forgotten
Battlegrounds. Sponsored by
Mason’s Department of History
and Art History.
Events take place in various buildings on
George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus,
4400 University Dr., Fairfax, Va., except where
otherwise indicated. All events are free, except
where noted. Download the FftB app to build
your personal schedule of event favorites!
11
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 continued
Noon
Historian Denise A. Spellberg
Research Hall, Room 163
In Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an:
Islam and the Founders,
Spellburg, a professor of history
and Middle Eastern studies
at the University of Texas at
Austin, reveals how Jefferson’s
interest in Islam played a
pivotal role in the development
of the United States—with Jefferson drawing
upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration
of Muslims to fashion a practical foundation for
governance in America. Sponsored by Mason’s Ali
Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies.
1:30 p.m.
Better Said Than Done: A Panel
Discussion
Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson Center Plaza
Members of the storytelling troupe Better Said
Than Done, performing Thursday, September 18,
at the Auld Shebeen in downtown Fairfax, offer
a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their work with
“Living to Tell about It: A Panel Discussion on the
Art of True, Personal Storytelling.” Moderated by
Shawn Westfall, the panel includes storytellers
David Supley Foxworth, Jessica Piscitelli
Robinson, and Ellouise Schoettler.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 continued
a senior military intelligence
officer, combat veteran of
Afghanistan, and Foreign
Service officer for the U.S.
Department of State—informs
his new book, Seriously Not All
Right: Five Wars in Ten Years, a
work that is part military and
diplomatic memoir, and part story of personal
redemption and service after service.
Everyone Is Gay
Founders Dannielle
Owens-Reid and
Kristin Russo
Research Hall, Room
163
Begun as an advice
website with an
emphasis on lesbian,
gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer/
questioning (LGBTQ) youth, Everyone Is Gay
promotes equality and peer advocacy, provides
outreach to examine how LGBTQ issues intersect
with other communities, and utilizes laughter,
honesty, and dialogue as tools toward creating
a better. In their latest work, This Is A Book for
Parents of Gay Kids, Owens-Reid and Russo draw
on their work with Everyone Is Gay and rely on an
accessible Q&A format to offer a go-to resource
for parents hoping to communicate better with
their gay children. Sponsored by Mason’s LGBTQ
Resources.
Dannielle Owens-Reid and
Kristin Russo
4:30 p.m.
3 p.m.
Nonfiction Writer Ron
Capps
Ron Capps
12
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Capps’ quarter-century of work
for the U.S. government—as
Poetic and Intellectual Freedom: A Panel
Discussion
Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson Center Plaza
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is a
literary and visual arts project with cultural
festivals planned for January–March 2016 at
George Mason University and throughout the
area. Exhibits, readings, films, and numerous
interactive public programs will commemorate
the 2007 bombing of
Baghdad’s historic bookselling
street. In advance of that
project, panelists draw on
their own experiences to
speak about the value of a
free exchange of ideas and
knowledge. Panelists include
Elliott Colla, author of
Baghdad Central and director
of Arabic and Islamic Studies
at Georgetown University;
Sumaiya Hamdani,
Sumaiya Hamdani
professor of Middle Eastern
Studies at George Mason University; Sarah
Browning, director of Split This Rock; Zein ElAmine of Maryland’s Young Scholars Program
and assistant director of the Jimenez-Porter
Writers’ House at the University of Maryland;
and Mousa Al-Nasseri, a merchant from AlMutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq. The panel
will be moderated by Helen Frederick and
Terry P. Scott.
Novelist Porochista
Khakpour
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
Iranian-American critic and
novelist Khakpour, author of
Sons and Other Flammable
Objects, delivers a bold fabulist
novel, The Last Illusion, about a
feral boy coming of age in New
York, based on a legend from
the medieval Persian epic The
Shahnameh, the Book of Kings.
Porochista
Khakpour
Folklorist Lisa Gabbert
Research Building I, Room 163
Gabbert’s latest book, Winter
Carnival in a Western Town:
Identity, Change, and the Good
Lisa Gabbert
of the Community, examines
the questions surrounding
the McCall, Idaho, winter carnival: How does a
fall for the book festival 2014
community define itself to others—and to itself?
How do civic celebrations connect with tradition
and look toward the future? Where and how do
culture and commerce meet and interact?
Still Writing—a meditation on the artistic process
and searching look at her own creative life—is
both a lodestar for aspiring scribes and an
eloquent memoir of the writing life.
6 p.m.
7 p.m.
Mystery Writers of America:
Murder & More
Literary Scholar Linda
Janet Holmes
Harris Theatre
Four area mystery writers discuss
their newest books and the
mystery genre: E.A. Aymar,
Mason alumnus and author of
I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead;
Barb Goffman
Barb Goffman, Macavity
Award-winning short story
writer with her debut collection
Don’t Get Mad, Get Even;
Mary Miley, historian and
author of the Roaring Twenties
Mary Miley
mystery series, including The
Impersonator, winner of the
2012 Mystery Writers of America
Best First Crime Novel award,
Kathryn
and the soon-to-be-released
O’Sullivan
Silent Murders; and Kathryn
O’Sullivan, a playwright and
professor at Northern Virginia
Community College, whose
mystery debut Foal Play won
Donna Andrews
the Malice Domestic Best
First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition.
Moderated by Donna Andrews, Agatha,
Anthony, Barry, and Lefty Award-winning author
of the Meg Langslow series, most recently
including The Good, The Bad, and the Emus.
Sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of
Mystery Writers of America.
E. A. Aymar
Memoirist Dani Shapiro
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
Shapiro is the bestselling
author of five novels and three
memoirs. Her newest memoir
Sherwood Regional Library,
2501 Sherwood Hall Lane,
Alexandria, VA
Linda Janet Holmes
The author of A Joyous Revolt:
Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist, the
first-ever, full-length biography of Bambara,
remembers the life and work of this seminal
writer and activist and discusses her lasting
impact on African American literature and culture.
7:30 p.m.
Poet and Essayist Lia
Purpura and Novelist
Maud Casey
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
Lia Purpura
Purpura is the author of seven
collections of essays, poems,
and translations, most recently including the
essay collection Rough Likeness, described by
Phillip Lopate as “an astonishment—a book to savor, read
slowly, smile at, sigh at, and
cherish,” and of the forthcoming poetry collection It Shouldn’t
Have Been Beautiful. Casey is the Maud Casey
author of three novels, The Man
Who Walked Away, The Shape of Things to Come,
and Genealogy, and a collection of stories, Drastic.
Historian Timothy M. Gay
George Mason Regional
Library, 7001 Little River
Turnpike, Annandale, VA
The award-winning author
of Assignment to Hell: The
War against Nazi Germany
Timothy M. Gay
with Correspondents Walter
Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A.J. Liebling, Homer
Bigart, and Hal Boyle shifts his attention to
another tense tale from World War II: Savage
Will: The Daring Escape of Americans Trapped
behind Nazi Lines recounts the
harrowing ordeal and heroic
rescue of American medics and
nurses whose plane crashed
in Albania in 1943. Sponsored
by the Friends of the George
Mason Regional Library.
7:30 p.m.
Sophie Hannah Debuts New Agatha Christie
Harris Theatre
The internationally bestselling author of nine psychological thrillers—from
Little Face to The Telling Error (recently published in the UK)— makes history
this fall for writing the first-ever new Agatha Christie novel not penned by
Christie herself. Fully authorized by the Christie estate,
The Monogram Murders features the return of iconic detective Hercule Poirot,
the Belgian detective introduced to the world in 1920’s The Mysterious Affair
at Styles. It has been 38 years since Agatha Christie’s last novel, Sleeping
Murder, was published in 1976 and 39 years since the final Poirot, Curtain.
Hannah appears the day after Christie’s 124th birthday. Let there be cake!
Sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.
Dani Shapiro
www.fallforthebook.org
13
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
Noon
Nonfiction Writer
Guillermo Fesser
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
In 2002, Spanish television and Guillermo Fesser
radio journalist Fesser quit his
morning talk show—and its
million-plus listeners—for a
sabbatical year in Rhinebeck,
NY. One Hundred Miles from
Manhattan, the memoir of his
life in Rhinebeck, offers not just
an affectionate portrait of small
town America but also a wry outsider’s view of
the larger country and its often quirky culture.
1:30 p.m.
Sociologist Earl Smith
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Rubin Distinguished Professor
Earl Smith
of American Ethnic Studies
at Wake Forest University,
Smith has written eight books,
addressing issues from race
relations, social stratification,
violence against women,
and family dynamics to
globalization and sports. His
most recent book Race, Sport,
and the American Dream, is the culmination
of a long-term research project investigating
the scope and consequences of the deepening
relationship between African American males and
the world of sports.
2:15 p.m.
Historian Jane Hampton
Cook
Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute, 4210 Roberts Road,
Fairfax, VA
On the heels of last year’s
14
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 continued
American Phoenix, about John
Quincy and Louisa Adams and
the War of 1812, this popular
historian returns to that war
and one of its longest-lasting
legacies in her new book
America’s Star-Spangled Story:
Celebrating 200 years of the National Anthem,
1814-2014. Sponsored by Osher Lifelong
Learning Institute.
3 p.m.
Publishing Alternatives: A
Panel Discussion
Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson
Center Plaza
P.J. Devlin
Today’s world offers writers
myriad fresh opportunities
outside of traditional publishing
ventures—and three authors
take the stage to share their
Jenny
Drummey
experiences pursuing some of
those opportunities. P.J. Devlin
has published her first book,
Wissahickon Souls: A Wissahickon
Creek Story, set in 19th-century
Philadelphia, through Possibilities
Publishing, which positions itself
“between traditional publishing
and self-publishing.” Jenny
Drummey’s Unrequited, which
promises that “memories are
Amanda
Holmes Duffy
better with the Zimblist Holistic
Recliner,” was published by
Rebel ePublishers, specializing in
ebooks and print-on-demand. And
Amanda Holmes Duffy’s I Know
Where I Am When I’m Falling
was published by Oak Tree Press,
whose mission is to “design, produce, distribute,
and promote excellent books by authors largely
ignored or abandoned by corporate publishing
conglomerates.”
Call and Response Gallery Talk
2nd Floor Conference Room, Fenwick Library
Mason professors Susan Tichy and Helen
Frederick moderate a panel featuring contributors
to the Call and Response Collaborative Exhibition
“In 24 hours, everywhere the dawn rises again,”
on view throughout September in the Fenwick
Gallery, Fenwick Library.
Sociologist James Joseph Dean
Research Building I, Room 163
In Straights: Heterosexuality
in a Post-Closeted Culture,
Dean, a professor of sociology
at Sonoma State University,
explores how straight
James Joseph Dean
Americans make sense of
their sexual and gendered
selves in a culture that is
more accepting of lesbians
and gay men, that has seen a
proliferation of LGBTQ media
representation, and that has
witnessed the attainment of a
range of legal rights for samesex couples. Sponsored by Mason’s Women and
Gender Studies Program.
4:30 p.m.
Novelist Jenny Offill
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Offill has followed Last
Things—a New York Times
Notable Book of the Year and
Jenny Offill
a finalist for the L.A. Times
First Book Award—with
Dept. of Speculation, an
unconventionally told tale
that offers a portrait of a
marriage and a rumination
of the mysteries of intimacy,
trust, and faith. Fairfax Prizewinning author Michael Cunningham has
Jane Hampton
Cook
fall for the book festival 2014
said that “Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation
resembles no book I’ve read before. If I tell you
that it’s funny, and moving, and true; that it’s
as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that
it tells a profound story of love and parenthood
while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka,
Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for
the housewife of 1896, will you please simply
believe me, and read it?”
6 p.m.
Mason MFA Alumni
Reading
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
Lisa Ampleman
Alumni of Mason’s MFA
program in creative writing
share readings from their
recently published works.
Participants
include Lisa
Ampleman,
author of
the poetry
collection Full Cry; which
Matt Burriesci
won the Stevens Manuscript
Competition;
Matt
Burriesci,
author of the
forthcoming
Alyson Foster
novel
Nonprofit
and the
forthcoming memoir Dead
White Guys: A Father, His
Daughter, and the Great Books
of the Western World; and
Alyson Foster, author of the
novel God Is an Astronaut.
7 p.m.
7:30 p.m.
Real Life 101:
“Overwhelmed”
Founders Hall, George Mason
University, 3351 Fairfax Drive,
Arlington, VA
Brigid Schulte
The title of Brigid Schulte’s
new book—Overwhelmed:
Work, Love, and Play When No
One Has the Time—will likely
resonate with the experience
of many adults, especially
working parents, in today’s
fast-paced
world. What
factors lie at
the root of
this issue?
And what
Todd Kashdan
Beth Cabrera
moves can
we make to
ease our seemingly overtaxed
schedules? Schulte, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist for
the Washington Post, joins
industrial and organizational
psychologist Beth Cabrera,
Mason professor Todd
Kashdan, author of The
Upside of Your Dark Side: Why
Being Your Whole Self—Not
Just Your “Good” Self—Drives
Melissa Milkie
Success and Fulfillment, and
sociologist Melissa Milkie,
co-author of Changing
Rhythms of American Family
Life, for a panel discussion on
this pressing and pervasive
problem. Sponsored by Burke
& Herbert Bank.
FAIRFAX PRIZE
PRESENTATION:
Richard Russo
Harris Theatre
Pulitzer Prize-winning
novelist Richard Russo
accepts the 2014 Fairfax Prize, which
honors outstanding literary achievement
and celebrates contributions to the larger
literary landscape, including generously
giving personal time and talents to the
development of literature and literary
endeavors; mentoring younger writers; and/
or giving special service to the community
of writers. Russo is the author of seven
novels—including 2001’s Pulitzer Prizewinning Empire Falls
and his most recent
book, Elsewhere—and
one collection of short
stories. Sponsored
by the Fairfax Library
Foundation.
7:30 p.m.
Poet Peter Streckfus
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
The award-winning poet
and Mason professor shares
Peter Streckfus
selections of his work,
including poems from his two collections: Errings,
winner of Fordham University
Press’s 2013 POL Editor’s Prize,
and The Cuckoo, winner of the
Yale Series of Younger Poets
competition in 2003.
Events take place in various buildings on George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus, 4400 University
Dr., Fairfax, Va., except where otherwise indicated. All events are free, except where noted. Download
the FftB app to build your personal schedule of event favorites!
www.fallforthebook.org
15
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
Noon
Historian Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Spanning 300 years of
Roxanne DunbarOrtiz
history and focusing on the
descendants of the fifteen
million people who originally
inhabited this land, DunbarOrtiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’
History of the United States
challenges the founding myth
of the country and significantly
reframes how we view our
past. Sponsored by Mason’s Office of Diversity,
Inclusion, and Multicultural Education.
1:30 p.m.
Comics Scholar Sheena
Howard
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Howard, a professor in the
Sheena Howard
Department of Communication
and Journalism at Rider
University in Lawrenceville,
New Jersey, is the author of
Black Queer Identity Matrix:
Towards an Integrated Queer
of Color Framework and of
Black Comics: Politics and Race
of Representation, which recently won the Will
Eisner Award for Best Scholarly/Academic Work at
the 2014 Comic-Con International. Sponsored by
Mason’s African and African American Studies.
Anthropologist Amy
Shuman
The HUB, Front Ballroom
The classical heroic narratives
seem to fail us in the
Amy Shuman
contemporary world and
instead, more often, people acclaimed for their
heroism refuse the label. In some cases, emerging
16
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 continued
from a traumatic, violent situation as a hero simply
doesn’t seem possible, and in others people feel
that their responses to danger or trauma are
ordinary human, rather than heroic, acts. Based
on her work with people applying for political
asylum in the U.S. and the U.K, Shuman, author of
Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the
Critique of Empathy, will discuss how the study
of folklore can provide significant understandings
of the political asylum experience. Sponsored by
Mason’s Women and Gender Studies.
3 p.m.
Women and Gender Studies Scholar
Wendy S. Hesford
The HUB, Front Ballroom
In her latest book, Spectacular
Rhetorics: Human Rights
Visions, Recognitions,
Feminisms, Hesford, a
Wendy S. Hesford
professor of English at The
Ohio State University, explores
the use of visual images and
rhetoric in documentary films,
photography, and theater
to construct certain bodies,
populations, and nations as
victims for Western audiences
and to incorporate them into
human rights discourses on topics including
torture and unlawful detention, ethnic genocide,
and rape as a means of warfare, migration, and
the trafficking of women and children, the global
sex trade, and child labor. Sponsored by Mason’s
Women and Gender Studies Program.
Theatre Critic
W. B. Worthen
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Professor in the Department
W. B. Worthen
of Theatre at Barnard College,
the acclaimed author of several
books on drama and performance theory has
most recently written Shakespeare Performance
Studies, which explores the
interfaces between the origins
of Shakespeare’s writing as
literature and as theatre;
the modes of engagement
with Shakespeare’s plays for
readers and spectators; and
the function of changing
performance technologies on our knowledge of
Shakespeare.
contemporary novelist who may be writing
a sequel to Sherwood Anderson’s classic
Winesburg, Ohio, and the second following the
hero of Anderson’s own book
as he arrives in Chicago at the
turn of the previous century—
each man’s story offering a
counterpoint to the other and
together providing a portrait of
America then and now.
4 p.m.
6 p.m.
Psychologist Todd
Kashdan
Grand Tier III, Center for the
Arts
Mason psychology professor
Todd Kashdan
Kashdan discusses his latest
book, The Upside of Your Dark
Side: Why Being Your Whole
Self—Not Just Your “Good”
Self—Drives Success and
Fulfillment, which draws on
years of scientific research
and a wide array of real-life
examples including sports, the military, parenting,
education, romance, business, and more to
show how anger fuels creativity, guilt sparks
improvement, self-doubt enhances performance,
selfishness increases courage, and accessing
the full range of emotions and behavior make
us better suited for whatever situations we
face. A reception precedes the event at 3:30
p.m. Sponsored by Mason’s Center for the
Advancement of Well-Being.
4:30 p.m.
Keith Donohue
Johnson Center Meeting
Room D
The bestselling author of The
Stolen Child, The Angels of
Destruction, and Centuries of
June returns with his eagerly
awaited fourth novel, The Boy
Who Drew Monsters, about a
10-year-old boy trapped inside
his own world, whose drawings
blur the lines between fantasy
and reality—for himself and
everyone around him.
Master of Fine Arts Fellows Reading
Research Building I, Room 163
Students in Mason’s nationally ranked MFA
program—including poets Anya Creightney
and Alyssa Dandrea; fiction writer Ah-reum
Han; and nonfiction writer Alexandra Ghaly—
share samples of the work that helped them win
fellowships for their final year of graduate school.
Sponsored by Mason’s Creative Writing Program.
Haute Cuisine at the Hylton
Novelist Porter Shreve
Porter Shreve
Novelist Keith Donohue
Sandy Spring Bank Tent,
Johnson Center Plaza
Shreve’s latest work, The
End of the Book, offers two
tales in alternating chapters:
the first about an aspiring
fall for the book festival 2014
Hylton Performing Arts Center, George Mason
University, 10960 George Mason Circle,
Manassas, VA
Fall for the Book hosts its second annual
celebration of fine food, superior drink, and the
various stories behind the scenes of every aspect
from farm to table—and even beyond. A 6:15
p.m. food writing workshop with Jason Shriner
www.fallforthebook.org
of the Aubergine Chef, an online baking and
pastry blog, is followed by a 7 p.m. reading by
Laura Florand, international bestselling and
award-winning author of the Amour et Chocolat
series, including The Chocolate Thief, The
Chocolate Kiss, and more. At 7:30 p.m., individual
stations open for tastings, demonstrations,
and discussions by a variety of chefs and food
celebrities including: Robert Kingsbury of
Kingsbury Chocolate and Confections, distributed
throughout Northern Virginia and DC; Dave
Lefeve of The Cock and Bowl in Occoquan, VA,
making recipes included in his wife Claudia
Lefeve’s novels; Belinda Miller, whose
children’s fantasy novel Phillip’s Quest, Book I:
Winterfrost features whimsical recipes; Miguel
Pires, owner of Zandra’s Taqueria in Manassas,
VA; Amy Riolo, author of an award-winning
series of Mediterranean cookbooks and star of
the syndicated “Culture of Cuisine” videos; Jason
Shriner of the Aubergine Chef; Joe Yonan,
Washington Post food and travel editor and
author most recently of Eat Your Vegetables: Bold
Recipes for the Single Cook; and representatives
of Heritage Brewing Company in Manassas. Also
appearing are the recently appointed Prince
William County Poet Laureates Robert Scott
and Alexandra “Zan” Hailey, talking about
their work and community projects. Sponsored by
Write by the Rails, the Prince William Chapter of
the Virginia Writers Club.
David Supley Foxworth, Karen Lee, Pierce
McManus, Miriam Nadel, and Ellouise
Schoettler—promising true and unforgettable
tales from each teller’s own experiences.
Mystery Writers A.X.
Ahmad and Monica Bhide
One More Page Books, 2200
N. Westmoreland Street, #101,
Arlington, VA
A. X. Ahmad
After debuting The Caretaker
at One More Page at our last
festival, Ahmad returns this
year with a second novel
featuring an Indian Army
officer
turned
amatuer
sleuth,
The Last Taxi Ride—named
by Bethanne Patrick in
Monica Bhide
Washingtonian as one of
the summer’s top books.
Bhide—an award-winning
cookbook author and expert
on Indian cuisine—tries her
hand at another genre with
the publication of her first
short story in the anthology
Singapore Noir.
7:30 p.m.
Poet Mary Szybist
7 p.m.
Better Said Than Done: An Evening of
Storytelling
The Auld Shebeen, 3971 Chain Bridge Road,
Fairfax, VA
Join members of the storytelling troupe Better
Said Than Done—the “best performing arts
company” by Virginia Living Magazine—for
a night of “Reading, Writing, and Art: Stories
about the Person, Process, and Performance
of Art.” Hosted by founder Jessica Piscitelli
Robinson, the evening’s entertainment features
storytellers Richard Barr, Ann Cavazos Chen,
Mary Szybist
Research Building I, Room 163
Szybist’s first book, Granted,
was a finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle Award,
and her second, Incarnadine,
won the 2013 National Book
Award for Poetry—with the
award committee describing
the collection as “a religious
book for nonbelievers, or a
book of necessary doubts for
the faithful.”
17
FESTIVAL AT-A-GLANCE (By Genre & Topic)
Here you’ll find Fall for the Book’s many events organized by category for greater ease in planning. Find your favorite genre or subject,
then find out who will be at this year’s Fall for the Book to speak on that topic or represent that genre. Complete information is listed in
the full calendar. All events below take place Thursday-Thursday, September 11-18.
AWARD PRESENTATIONS
Friday — Mason Award presentation to Jodi
Picoult
Saturday — Busboys and Poets Award
Presentation to Martín Espada
Monday — Mary Roberts Rinehart Award
presentation to Eula Biss
Wednesday — Fairfax Prize Presentation to
Richard Russo
FICTION
Thursday, Sept. 11 — Roxana Robinson,
Sparta.
Friday — Catherine Bell, Rush of Shadows;
Defying Gravity Panel with Elizabeth Word
Gutting, Veronica Li, Mary Claire Mahaney, Judith
O’Neill, Valerie O. Patterson, and Sally Toner;
Nathan Leslie, Sibs; Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time; Pat
Spears, Dream Chaser.
Saturday — Louis Bayard, Roosevelt’s Beast;
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Bittersweet; Susan
Coll, The Stager; Ed Falco, Toughs; Roxane Gay,
An Untamed State; Bret Anthony Johnston,
Remember Me Like This; Allegra Jordan, The End
of Innocence; Rebecca Lee, Bobcat; Neely Tucker,
The Ways of the Dead; Laura van den Berg, The
Isle of Youth; Ronna Wineberg, On Bittersweet
Place.
Sunday — A.X. Ahmad, The Last Taxi Ride; Gail
Barrett, Seduced by His Target; Carla Buckley,
The Deepest Secret; Alexa Day, Illicit Impulse; Lori
Dillon, Fire of the Dragon; Ed Falco, Toughs; James
Grady, Mad Dogs; Mary Buford Hitz, Riding to
Camile: A Novel of Love and Perseverance Through
One of Virginia’s Most Devastating Storms;
Madeline Iva, “Sexsomnia”; Laura Kaye, Hard to
Hold on To; Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train;
Shara Lanel, Icy Seduction; Allison Leotta, Speak
of the Devil; Tracey Livesay, The Tycoon’s Socialite
Bride; Pamela Bauer Mueller, Lady Unveiled:
Catherine Greene Miller, 1755-1814; Terri Osburn,
18
Home to Stay; Pamela Palmer, Wulfe Untamed;
Hope Ramsay, Inn at Last Chance; Ronna
Wineberg, On Bittersweet Place.
Monday — Richard Bausch, Before, During,
After; Robert Bausch, Far as the Eye Can
See; Charles Belfoure, The Paris Architect;
Kevin Clouther, We Were Flying to Chicago;
Alan Michael Parker, The Committee on Town
Happiness.
Tuesday — E.A. Aymar, I’ll Sleep When You’re
Dead; Maud Casey, The Man Who Walked
Away; Elliott Colla, Baghdad Central; Barb
Goffman, Don’t Get Mad, Get Even; Sophie
Hannah, The Monogram Murders; Mary Miley,
The Impersonator; Kathryn O’Sullivan, Foal Play;
Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion.
Wednesday — Matt Burriesci, Nonprofit; P.J.
Devlin, Wissahickon Souls: A Wissahickon Creek
Story; Jenny Drummey, Unrequited; Amanda
Holmes Duffy, I Know Where I Am When I’m
Falling; Alyson Foster, God Is An Astronaut;
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation; Richard Russo,
Elsewhere.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — A.X. Ahmad, The Last
Taxi Ride; Monica Bhide, Singapore Noir; Keith
Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters; Laura
Florand, The Chocolate Kiss; Mason MFA Fellow
Ah-reum Han; Porter Shreve, The End of the Book.
POETRY
Friday — Timothy Donnelly, The Cloud
Corporation; Dorothea Lasky, Rome; Roger Reeves,
King Me.
Saturday — Betsy Andrews, The Bottom; Jen
Coleman, Psalms for Dogs and Sorcerers; Martin
Espada, The Trouble Ball; Kevin McLellan, Before
the Door; Anne Lesley Selcer, from A Book of
Poems on Beauty.
Sunday — Linda Hogan, Dark. Sweet. New and
Selected Poems.
Monday — Linda Hogan, Dark. Sweet. New and
FOLKLORE
Tuesday — Lisa Gabbert, Winter Carnival in a
Western Town: Identity, Change and the Good of
the Community.
Saturday — Lydia Denworth, I Can Hear You
Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science
of Sound and Language; Roxane Gay, Bad
Feminist.
Selected Poems; Karla Kelsey, A Conjoined Book;
Brian Teare, Companion Grasses.
Thursday, Sept.18 — Amy Shuman, Other
People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the
Critique of Empathy.
Tuesday — Lia Purpura, It Shouldn’t Have Been
Beautiful.
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
Sunday — Elaine C. Jean and Paul N. Jean,
Carpe Weekend: 52 Day Trips and Adventures
near Washington, DC; Nevin Martell, Freak Show
Without A Tent: Swimming with Piranhas, Getting
Stoned in Fiji and Other Family Vacations.
Thursday, Sept. 11 — Winston Groom; The
Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle,
Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight.
Monday — Eula Biss, On Immunity: An
Inoculation; Angie Chuang, The Four Words for
Home.
Friday — Tim Grove, A Grizzly in the Mail and
Other Adventures in American History.
Tuesday — Ron Capps, Seriously Not All Right:
Five Wars in Ten Years; Lia Purpura, Rough
Likeness; Dani Shapiro, Still Writing.
Wednesday — Lisa Ampleman, Full Cry; Peter
Streckfus, Errings.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Mason MFA Fellows Anya
Creightney and Alyssa Dandrea; Prince William
County Poet Laureates Alexandra “Zan” Hailey
and Robert Scott; Mary Szybist, Incarnadine.
CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT
Friday — Chris Grabenstein, Escape from Mr.
Lemoncello’s Library.
Sunday — Gigi Amateau, Come August,
Come Freedom: The Bellows, The Gallows, and
the Black General Gabriel; Falling for the Story
reading; Edwin Fontanez, The Illuminated Forest;
Kristen Lippert-Martin, Tabula Rasa; Jamey
Long, A Possum’s Expedition: Lewis & Clark and
Sacagawea; Meg Medina, Yaqui Delgado Wants
to Kick Your Ass; Katrina Moore, So Long GnopJiye; A.B. Westrick, Brotherhood.
Monday — L.M. Elliott, A Troubled Peace;
Kathryn Erskine,The Badger Knight.
Sunday — Michael Lisicky, Woodward & Lothrop:
A Store Worthy of the Nation’s Capital.
Monday — Marc Leepson, What So Proudly We
Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life.
Tuesday — Timothy M. Gay, Savage Will: The
Daring Escape of Americans Trapped Behind Nazi
Lines; Linda Janet Holmes, A Joyous Revolt: Toni
Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist; Alan Rems,
South Pacific Cauldron: World War II’s Great
Forgotten Battlegrounds; Denise A. Spellberg,
Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the
Founders; Peter Stearns, Peace in World History.
Wednesday — Jane Hampton Cook, America’s
Star-Spangled Story: Celebrating 200 years of the
National Anthem, 1814-2014.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Belinda Miller, Phillip’s
Quest, Book I: Winterfrost.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United
States.
ART/PERFORMANCE
LITERARY CRITICISM
Friday — Julia Jarcho, Grimly Handsome.
Saturday — Maureen Corrigan, So We Read
On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why
It Endures.
Sunday — Glenn Winters, The Opera Zoo.
Wednesday — Call and Response Gallery Talk.
COOKING/FOOD
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Haute Cuisine at the
Hylton with Laura Florand, Alexandra “Zan”
Hailey, Robert Kingsbury, Dave and Claudia
Lefeve, Belinda Miller, Miguel Pires, Amy Riolo,
Robert Scott, Jason Shriner, Joe Yonan, and
representatives from Heritage Brewing Company.
fall for the book festival 2014
Thursday, Sept. 18 — W. B. Worthen,
Shakespeare Performance Studies.
MEMOIR AND CREATIVE NONFICTION
Thursday, Sept. 11 — Luis Carlos Montalván,
Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the
Golden Retriever Who Saved Him; Anna WhistonDonaldson, Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love.
www.fallforthebook.org
Wednesday — Matt Burriesci, Dead White Guys:
A Father, His Daughter, and the Great Books of the
Western World; Guillermo Fesser, One Hundred
Miles from Manhattan.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Mason MFA Fellow
Alexandra Ghaly.
PLAYWRITING
Friday — Julia Jarcho, Grimly Handsome.
POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
[PREVIEW EVENT] Monday, September 8
— Naomi Schaefer Riley, Got Religion?: How
Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues Can Bring
Young People Back.
Saturday — Kate Flora, Death Dealer: How Cops
and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice.
Monday — Sigrid Fry-Revere, The Kidney Sellers:
A Journey of Discovery in Iran.
Thursday, Sept. 11 — David Finkel, Thank You
For Your Service.
Tuesday — Poetic and Intellectual Freedom Panel
with Mousa Al-Nasseri, Sarah Browning, Elliott
Colla, Zein El-Amine, and Sumaiya Hamdani.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Wendy S. Hesford,
Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions,
Recognitions, Feminisms.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Tuesday — Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin
Russo, Everyone Is Gay.
Wednesday — Beth Cabrera; James Joseph
Dean, Straights: Heterosexuality in a Post-Closeted
Culture; Todd Kashdan, The Upside of Your Dark
Side: Why Being Your Whole Self—Not Just Your
“Good” Self—Drives Success and Fulfillment;
Melissa Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American
Family Life; Brigid Schulte, Overwhelmed; Earl
Smith, Race, Sport, and the American Dream.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Sheena Howard, Black
Comics: Politics and Race of Representation; Todd
Kashdan, The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being
Your Whole Self—Not Just Your “Good” Self—
Drives Success and Fulfillment.
STORYTELLING
Tuesday — Better Said Than Done Panel with
David Supley Foxworth, Jessica Piscitelli Robinson,
and Ellouise Schoettler.
Thursday, Sept. 18 — Better Said Than Done
Storytelling with Richard Barr, Ann Cavazos
Chen, David Supley Foxworth, Karen Lee, Pierce
McManus, Miriam Nadel, Jessica Piscitelli
Robinson, and Ellouise Schoettler.
SCIENCE
Thursday, Sept. 11 — Sam Kean, The Tale
of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of
the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of
Trauma, Madness, and Recovery; Carl Zimmer,
Evolution: Making Sense of Life.
Saturday — Lydia Denworth, I Can Hear You
Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science
of Sound and Language.
WRITING AND PUBLISHING
Sunday — Self-Publishing Panel with Mary
Buford Hitz, Elaine C. Jean and Paul N. Jean, and
Nevin Martell.
Wednesday — Publishing Alternatives Panel
with P.J. Devlin, Jenny Drummey, and Amanda
Holmes Duffy.
19
EVENTS THROUGHOUT THE REGION
Fairfax
The Auld Shebeen
Better Said Than Done Storytelling with Richard
Barr, Ann Cavazos Chen, David Supley Foxworth,
Karen Lee, Pierce McManus, Miriam Nadel,
All events below take place away from the
Jessica Piscitelli Robinson, and Ellouise Schoettler,
Thursday, September 18, 7 p.m.
festival’s base at George Mason University’s
Fairfax, Virginia campus. Days of the week
Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia
Novelist Ronna Wineberg, On Bittersweet Place,
correspond to the festival dates: Thursday,
Sunday, 3 p.m.
September 11–Thursday, September 18, with one
The Old Firestation 3
preview event on Monday, September 8. Check
Poets Timothy Donnelly, Dorothea Lasky, and Roger
out the full listing in this program for complete
Reeves, Friday, 8 p.m.
information.
Old Town Hall
VIRGINIA
Retail Historian Michael Lisicky, Woodward &
Alexandria
Lothrop: A Store Worthy of the Nation’s Capital,
Sherwood Regional Library
Sunday, 2 p.m.
Literary Scholar Linda Janet Holmes, A Joyous
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activism,
Architect and Novelist Charles Belfoure, The Paris
Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Architect, Monday, 2:15 p.m.
Annandale
Historian Jane Hampton Cook, America’s StarGeorge Mason Regional Library
Spangled Story: Celebrating 200 years of the
Historian Timothy M. Gay, Savage Will: The Daring National Anthem, 1814-2014, Wednesday, 2:15 p.m.
Escape of Americans Trapped Behind Nazi Lines,
Robinson High School
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Young Adult Novelists L.M. Elliott, A Troubled
Peace, and Kathryn Erskine, The Badger Knight,
Arlington
Monday, 3 p.m.
One More Page Books
Memoirist Anna Whiston-Donaldson, Rare Bird: A
Sherwood Center
Memoir of Loss and Love, Thursday, September 11, Falling for the Story Reading, Sunday, 12:30 p.m.
7 p.m.
Children’s Book Authors Jamey Long, A Possum’s
Young Adult Panel with Gigi Amateau, Edwin
Expedition: Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea and
Fontanez, Kristen Lippert-Martin, Meg Medina, and Katrina Moore, So Long Gnop-Jiye, Sunday, 1:30 p.m.
A.B. Westrick, Sunday, 4:30 p.m.
Virginia Romance Writers Panel with Madeline
Mystery Writers A.X. Ahmad, The Last Taxi Ride,
Iva, Laura Kaye, Shara Lanel, and Tracey Livesay,
and Monica Bhide, Singapore Noir, Thursday,
Sunday, 2 p.m.
September 18, 7 p.m.
Self-Publishing Panel with Mary Buford Hitz,
George Mason University, Founder’s Hall
Elaine C. Jean and Paul N. Jean, and Nevin Martell,
Real Life 101 Panel with Beth Cabrera, Todd
Sunday, 3 p.m.
Kashdan, Melissa Milkie, and Brigid Schulte,
Virginia Romance Writers Panel with Gail Barrett,
Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Alexa Day, Lori Dillon, Terri Osburn, Pamela Palmer,
and Hope Ramsay, Sunday, 3:30 p.m.
Burke
Burke Centre Library
Novelist Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train,
Children’s Book Author Chris Grabenstein, Escape
Sunday, 5 p.m.
from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Virginia Opera Outreach Director Glenn Winters,
Pohick Regional Library
Sunday, 6:30 p.m.
Novelist and Historian Winston Groom, The
Leesburg
Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle,
Rust Library
Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight,
Memoirist Luis Carlos Montalván, Until Tuesday: A
Thursday, September 11, 7:30 p.m.
Fall for the Book offers events at various locations
throughout Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland—
bringing great writers from across the nation and
around the world to your backyard!
20
Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who
Saved Him, Thursday, September 11, 7 p.m.
Novelist Carla Buckley, The Deepest Secret, Sunday,
2 p.m.
Biographer Marc Leepson, What So Proudly We
Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life, Monday, 7 p.m.
Manassas
Hylton Performing Arts Center
Haute Cuisine at the Hylton Event with Laura
Florand, Alexandra “Zan” Hailey, Robert Kingsbury,
Dave Lefeve, Belinda Miller, Miguel Pires, Amy
Riolo, Robert Scott, Jason Shriner, Joe Yonan, and
representatives from Heritage Brewing Company,
Thursday, September 18, 6 p.m.
McLean
Alden Theatre
Science Writers Sam Kean, The Tale of the Dueling
Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain
as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness,
and Recovery, and Carl Zimmer, Evolution: Making
Sense of Life, Thursday, September 11, 7:30 p.m.
FALL FOR THE BOOK VIRTUAL PASSPORT
Travel around VA, MD, and DC with Fall for the Book this September 11-18. At each event you visit, check in via
Facebook* at Fall for the Book and start racking up those digital passport stamps! Collect any 6 stamps and be
entered to win some awesome prizes! One grand prize winner will receive a Barnes & Noble Nook, and two runnersup will win a bundle of signed books from this year’s winners of the Fairfax Prize, Mason Award, Busboys and Poets
Award, and Mary Roberts Rinehart Award.
G “Like” us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/FallfortheBook
G Follow us around the blogosphere for more awesome content: @FallfortheBook
(on Twitter and Instagram!), Fallforthebook.tumblr.com
G Use #FallfortheBook on all your social media streams because we’ll be re-tweeting/blogging
our favorite pictures and tweets!
*Only official check-in’s to Fall for the Book will be counted.
Oakton
Oakton Library
Memoirist and Science Writer Lydia Denworth,
I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey
through the Science of Sound and Language,
Saturday, 2 p.m.
Reston
Reston Regional Library
Historical Novelist Pamela Bauer Mueller, Lady
Unveiled: Catherine Greene Miller, 1755-1814,
Sunday, 2 p.m.
Springfield
Richard Byrd Library
Novelist Louis Bayard, Roosevelt’s Beast, Saturday,
2 p.m.
MARYLAND
Bethesda
The Writer’s Center
Fiction Writers Nathan Leslie, Sibs, and Pat Spears,
Dream Chaser, Friday, 8 p.m.
Craft of Suspense Panel with A.X. Ahmad, Ed Falco,
James Grady, and Allison Leotta, Sunday, 3 p.m.
WASHINGTON, DC
Busboys and Poets
Poet Linda Hogan, Dark. Sweet. New and Selected
Poems, Sunday, 6:30 p.m.
fall for the book festival 2014
An All GMU-Alumni Reading and
Discussion on Post-MFA Work + Life
with Nicole Louise Reid, Graham Foust,
and Yelizaveta Renfro
Monday, October 6th at 7:30 p.m.
Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts
Fall for the Book, the region’s oldest and largest celebration of literature,
reading and fun, thanks its generous sponsors and partners:
University Life
Sponsors:
University Libraries
African and African American
Studies
Creative Writing Program
Center for the Advancement
of Well-being
Department of History and
Art History
Women and Gender Studies
Ali Vural Ak Center for Global
Islamic Studies
The Friends of the
INTO Mason
Pohick Regional
Library
LGBTQ Resources
Office of Diversity, Inclusion,
and Multicultural Education
Friends of the
Richard Byrd
Library
Programming Partners:
English Department
Honors College Living
Learning Community
Mason Service Council
Writing Center
School of Art
Social Action and Integrative
Learning
Robinson
High School
The Harambee
Readers