Tag: West Virginia Book Festival

Best-Selling Author James Patterson To Speak At West Virginia Book Festival

The best-selling author of all time will be at the West Virginia Book Festival this weekend. 

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James Patterson will speak at the West Virginia Book Festival on Saturday, October 5.

James Patterson explained in an interview that he hasn’t always been a good public speaker, but he has improved over the years. Before becoming an author, he had a successful career in advertising. 

“When I got hired, the guy that hired me said that I was the shyest person he had ever interviewed. And part of the way I got over that and became a pretty decent public speaker is to tell stories. I just tell story after story after story and if Mayor Goodwin is cool, we will get people laughing and they’ll find out some stuff and I’m not about selling my books. I’m more about, you know, getting people reading,” Patterson said. 

Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin was scheduled to moderate Patterson’s presentation, but has had to cancel. Patterson’s talk is scheduled in the Coliseum at 3 p.m. on Saturday during the West Virginia Book Festival.

Patterson gets dozens of requests for appearances and many offer him large speaking fees. Patterson said the West Virginia Book Festival’ s invitation stood out.

“The approach was great. They said the right kinds of things. Libraries are a big deal for me and getting kids reading and getting the adults reading is huge,” he said. 

Reading is important for Patterson personally, too, but he has so many projects that he doesn’t have as much time to read as he used to. He said he has 33 live projects in his office right now. That said, he is still in the middle of a couple books. 

“I used to be a three or four book a week person. I just read a book “What it takes” by Stephen Schwarzman. He founded Blackstone (one of the largest private equity groups in the world), which is which is pretty cool. I’m reading a Robert Cray mystery. Jason Reynolds is a kids writer I like. I’m reading ‘Ghost’ right now,” Patterson said. 

Patterson is a big advocate for children’s reading programs. He created a program called ReadKiddoRead that helps parents find interesting books for their children. 

“A lot of people don’t know I write kids books, but I do and I love it. I think they’re actually my best books. And our mission at Jimmy books, which may sound simple, but I think it’s actually pretty smart, is when a kid finishes a Jimmy book to say ‘please give me another book,’ as opposed to ‘I don’t like to read’,” he said.   

As one of the most successful authors in the world, Patterson said he makes an effort to return that success to the community. 

“We have actually 450 scholarships for teachers. We do a thing with scholastic for another couple of million for classroom libraries. I think we had 112,000 teachers ask us for help. I think we helped 18,000. My mother was a teacher for I don’t know, 192 years so that’s sort of in my blood,” he said. 

Listen to an additional Q&A with James Patterson. 

To get a book signed by James Patterson at the festival this weekend, you need to show up early. He is on a tight schedule and only 100 ticket holders will be able to meet him. 

To receive a ticket, you must purchase either “Killer Instinct” or his children’s book “Max Einstein: Rebels with a Cause” at the West Virginia Book Company booth.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a sponsor of the festival, which runs from from 10 a.m. -8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4, and 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, in the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center. 

There will be a marketplace where local authors will sell their books, along with the used book sale and writing workshops. Other authors that will make presentations include: Salina Yoon, Orson Scott Card, Anthony Harkins, Meredith McCarroll and Denise Keirnan. 

To qualify to have Patterson sign your book, doors for the ticket line will open at 7 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 5. Patterson’s presentation is at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

Patterson will only sign one approved title per person; personalization and photographs are not permitted. A ticket and an approved title are required to enter the signing. 

In addition, at the Kanawha County Public Library’s table in the Marketplace, you can enter into a drawing for a ticket. The winners will be announced before James Patterson’s presentation in the Coliseum. If you win the drawing, you must purchase either James Patterson’s “Killer Instinct” or “Max Einstein: Rebels with a Cause” at the West Virginia Book Company booth.

Acclaimed Author Neil Gaiman To Speak at WV Book Festival

Author Neil Gaiman has earned many accolades for his books and graphic novels, including Hugo and Nebula awards for American Gods and The Graveyard Book. Two of his books, Coraline and Stardust, were made into blockbuster movies. 

 

Gaiman will be one of the featured speakers at the West Virginia Book Festival later this month. West Virginia Public Broadcasting is one of the festival’s sponsors.

Gaiman is primarily a fiction writer. He has crafted vivid characters who inhabit worlds that straddle the familiar and the fantastical. Strands of ancient and modern mythology run through much of Gaiman’s work.

Gaiman’s love of fantasy is evident in his decades-long collaboration with Abingdon, Virginia, artist Charles Vess, who illustrated the novel Stardust, among others. Gaiman says that’s not his only connection to Appalachia, though.

 

“But also in books of mine, like American Gods, in some ways began with my readings of the Appalachian folk tales,” he said. “The strange things that happened, or to my mind, the strange things that happened, to folk tales as they moved from England across the water. And the things that they would keep – a wit, they would keep wits, they would keep the triumph of intelligence and of craftiness. But they’d lose, they’d lose magic. And that fascinated me and that actually was in some ways the starting point for writing an entire novel – American Gods. And don’t think that people would ever point to that and go ‘Ah, this came out of the Appalachian Jack Stories,’ but in a lot of ways it did.”

 

Libraries in the Digital Age

Gaiman has spoken at length in the past about his love of libraries and shared some thoughts about the future of libraries in the digital age.

 

“I think the heartbreaking thing about libraries is, in this era of new technology, is that they are becoming more important, not less,” he said.

 

Gaiman said libraries are often the only places that people who don’t have access to the Internet can go to connect with the digital world. He also points to the changing role of librarians, who used to serve as navigators in an ocean of printed knowledge.

 

“And information was hard to find. And it was hard to find because it was like a flower growing in a desert – you had a long way to walk, but a librarian could take you to the flower. Now it’s more like  flowers growing in the Amazon jungle and you’re trying to find a specific flower,” Gaiman said. “Anyone who has spent 5 minutes Googling for information and just sees the amount of noise out there starts to realize that actually someone who knows what they’re doing is incredibly useful. And librarians know what they’re doing.”

 

Every Audience is Unique

Gaiman is one of the featured speakers at the West Virginia Book Festival next week in Charleston. He said he prefers a question-and-answer format for his talks because every audience is unique.

 

“It would be easy to get up and give a talk, or the same talk, over and over again. It’s so much more fun for me to find out what people want to know and answer those questions, because they’re always different,” Gaiman said. “I love it when people ask questions, I love getting questions on cards, that’s always fun, because at that point you can look at them and you go, ‘Oh, there’s two dozen people here who want to know about ‘Dr. Who’.”

 

Gaiman wrote two episodes for the popular British TV series — “Nightmare in Silver” and “The Doctor’s Wife.”

 

The author said that while he has traveled to and through West Virginia, he hasn’t had the chance to speak here and is very excited about the opportunity to do so.

 

More Audio from Neil Gaiman’s interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Gaiman also shared some stories about a close friend and collaborator Terry Pratchett, who died earlier this year from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Gaiman and Pratchett wrote the novel Good Omens together. Gaiman also spoke about his book The Sleeper and the Spindle, which Chris Riddell illustrated.

 

 

 

The Sleeper and the Spindle

In The Sleeper and the Spindle, I wrote a fairy story that's a strange kind of mash-up of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

This story was edited on Oct. 21, 2015, to reflect the fact that illustrator Charles Vess is from Abingdon, Virginia.

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