The Libraries is once again collaborating with the annual Fall for the Book Festival on a number of activities and events. In particular, the Libraries is pleased to be a sponsor of Fall for the Book headliner and 2019 Mason Reads author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who will discuss Why We Should All Be Feminists on Friday, October 11 at 12:30pm in the Center for the Arts. Fall for the Book will take place this week, October 10-12, 2019.

In conjunction with the festival, the Libraries’ Fenwick Gallery will present Call & Response: Transmogrify, an exhibition running through November 9, with a special artists talk on Thursday, October 10 at 1:30pm in Fenwick 2001 and a reception following at 3pm in Fenwick Gallery. Call & Response (an ongoing partnership between the School of Art, the Creative Writing program, and the Libraries) is an annual exhibit of collaborations between writers and visual artists, in which one calls and one responds. The result is a dynamic set of paired works of words and artistic media that resonate and speak to contemporary issues.

On Friday, October 11, the Libraries will celebrate with a special Fall for the Book edition of the Edible Book Festival. Stop by Fenwick 1014 to vote for your favorite edible creations (11am-12:30pm) and be sure to come back for the award announcements and tasting (12:30-2pm)!

The Creative Writing Program’s Visiting Writers Series, hosted by the Libraries, also continues this week, with three authors as part of the festival:

• Bella Pollen at 6 p.m. on Thursday, October 10 in Fenwick 2001 – Journalist, novelist, and memoirist Bella Pollen will discuss her recent Meet Me in the In-Between, an illustrated memoir.
• Cole Swensen at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 10 in Fenwick 2001 – Poet Cole Swensen, author of 17 collections of poetry, will discuss her recent On Walking On.
• R.O. Kwon at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, October 11 in Fenwick 2001 – Kwon, author of The Incendiaries, named a best book of the year by over forty publications will discuss “Cult, Faith, and Complicated Love.”

On Saturday, October 12 at 12pm in Harris Theater, the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), in partnership with the College of Visual and Performing Arts, will host a concert and celebration of the 20th anniversary of Kid Pan Alley and honor the donation of the Kid Pan Alley and Paul Reisler archives of thousands of songs and instrumental compositions to the Mason Libraries.

About the 2019 Fall for the Book Festival: This year Fall for the Book will welcome an esteemed lineup of poets, historians, novelists, memoirists, children’s authors, YA writers and more at George Mason University and locations around Northern Virginia. Headliners include essayist and novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, novelist and YA author Rainbow Rowell, novelist Delia Owens, and true crime writer, David Grann. Other featured writers are David Wallace-Wells presenting the Beck Environmental Lecture, Governor Terry McAuliffe, Senator Janet Howell, novelist R.O. Kwon, true crime writer Sarah Weinman, and poets, Cole Swensen, Yona Harvey, Amaud Jamaul Johnson and Brian Teare. Fall for the Book festival, which runs from October 10-12, 2019, is partnering with the City of Fairfax’s Fall Festival on Saturday, October 12 to bring a day of literary and artistic events to audiences of all ages. Literary Death Match, a fun, fast-paced literary game show will close the festival on Saturday evening. Fall for the Book is also proud to host the second annual award ceremony for its post-publication book prize for immigrant writers: The Institute for Immigration Research New American Voices Award, judged by Reyna Grande, Alia Malek, and E.C. Osondu. The three finalists, who will appear at the festival, will be announced this summer.