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By Totty Posted on Nature
If you’re in Washington, DC on Saturday, Oct. 9, amble on down to the National Mall (between 7th and 14th streets) and take in the 2004 National Book Festival. The event, now in its fourth year, is sponsored by The Library of Congress and hosted by Laura Bush.The festival, which runs from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. is a come-rain-or-shine event that’s open free to the public. More than 70 noted writers, poets and book illustrators will be on hand to sign books and talk to booklovers about their lives and inspirations. Among them: novelists Joyce Carol Oates and Anna Quindlen, mystery writer Robert B. Parker, poet Dana Goia, John Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, journalist Cokie Roberts, NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, sci-fi writers Ben Bova and Frederick Pohl, and travel and consumer writers Arthur Frommer and Heloise.
Other special guests will include Leigh and Leslie Keno from PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow,” and Kevin O'Connor and Tom Silva from "This Old House," also on PBS.The festival will be divided into pavilions, including Fiction and Imagination, History and Biography, Mysteries and Thrillers, Science Fiction and Fantasy (new this year), Home and Family, Teens and Children, Children, and Poetry.Other pavilions will include the Pavilion of the States, where the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and American trusts and territories will distribute materials about their reading and literacy promotion programs. The Let’s Read America Pavilion will feature enjoyable reading activities that can involve the whole family, while the The Library of Congress Pavilion will feature two oral history projects: Voices of Civil Rights and the Veterans History Project.
Over the next year, the Voices project will collect and preserve thousands of personal accounts of ordinary people who have fought for civil rights in America. The Veterans History Project is collecting the stories of those who served in World Wars I and II, and the Korean, Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, as well as stories from those who were actively involved in supporting the war efforts.More than 70,000 people attended the 2003 festival. A similar number is expected to attend this year’s event.
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