The 2023 Boston Book Festival street festival in Copley Square
The Boston Book Festival (BBF) is an independent nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also the name of its main event. The nonprofit was founded in 2009 by Deborah Z Porter, and aims to "celebrate the power of words to stimulate, agitate, unite, delight, and inspire by holding year-round events culminating in an annual, free Festival that promotes a culture of reading and ideas and enhances the vibrancy of our city".
The annual book festival combines a street festival with an array of authors and other literary presenters from around the world. Daytime events at the BBF are free. In 2014, 32,000 people attended.[citation needed]
Throughout the year, BBF hosts several literary events, several of which fall under their annual "Lounge Lit" series of literary outings, such as readings, cookbook author demos, and an annual literary pub trivia night. Since 2011, BBF has also hosted evening “kick-off” activities leading up to the Saturday festival.
The street festival is hosted on Copley Square, and usually includes a live music stage, dozens of exhibitors and vendors, and many free participatory activities for attendees and their families. This includes programming and activities for children,[2] writing workshops and contests, and open mic opportunities.
This year's festival also celebrated the start of a new literary outreach program: One City One Story. This initiative encouraged the greater Boston community to read and discuss a piece of literary fiction by making it readily available.
2011
The 2011 festival took place on October 15 and was similar in size to the 2010 festival. Large crowds filed in to hear talks such as: "Far Out Fiction"[5] (featuring Gregory Maguire, Karen Russell, Chuck Klosterman, and Kate Beaton), “A Reason to Lead” (featuring Governor Deval Patrick), “Graphic Novels” (featuring Daniel Clowes, Seth, and Alison Bechdel), and “Frontiers of Science” featuring Stephen Greenblatt, Lisa Randall, Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mo Willems was the kids' keynote speaker, and Michael Ondaatje delivered the festival-closing keynote, both presenting to several hundred attendees at the Back Bay Events Center's John Hancock Hall. The festival kicked off on Friday, October 14, with a special session called "The Art of The Wire", featuring a discussion with actors and writers of the acclaimed HBO television series.
In 2012 the festival launched a new program called BBF Unbound, in which community members were invited to submit proposals for sessions. In 2012, two proposals were accepted and subsequently developed and presented at the BBF: "Writing the War" and "Books Behind Bars".
The 2014 festival took place on October 23–25. Herbie Hancock, the memoir keynote speaker, started off the festival Thursday evening as he discussed his life and musical times with Berklee College of Music president Roger Brown. The following night, fiction keynote speaker Susan Minot joined Nigerian-American journalist Dayo Olopade in a conversation about Minot's latest novel Thirty Girls. Saturday's festivities began with kids’ keynote speaker Rick Riordan filling Trinity Church to capacity with fans young and old of his Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. There were over 150 notable presenters at the 2014 festival with panels such as “Technology: Promise and Peril” (featuring Andrew McAfee, David Rose, Nicholas Carr, and moderator Sacha Pfeiffer), “Mayor’s Rule” (featuring Benjamin Barber, Marty Walsh, Mayor Thomas Menino, Mayor Dan Rivera, and Mayor Lisa Wong, with host Bob Oakes), and “(Post) Modern Love” (featuring Daniel Jones, Margo Howard, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and moderator Meredith Goldstein); all drawing large crowds. The third keynote speaker Doris Kearns Goodwin provided her insights on presidential leadership from Lincoln to Obama in her history keynote, while Norman Foster rounded out the festival with his art, architecture, and design keynote.
2017
The 9th annual event took place October 26–28 in Copley Square with the theme of “Where We Find Ourselves”. Thursday night began the festival with “Lit Crawl Boston”. On Friday, an authors’ variety show, “The Book Revue”, was performed. Sarah Howard Parker, Director of Operations, called it “the most ambitious and complex festival we have had”. The schedule included author signings, music and dance workshops, science experiments, hands-on art explorations, inter-personal games, and writer workshops. Activities for children included appearances by characters Waldo, Nutbrown Hare, Olivia, Maisy, and the duo Elephant and Piggie. Lemony Snicket provided a kids’ keynote featuring the new picture book, “The Bad Mood and the Stick”, Waltham-raised author Joanna Schaffhausen presented her case for crime-solving in the “Gumshoes to Cyber Sleuths” session at the Old South Church. Adam Gopnik, Alan Light, and Rob Sheffield provided a session studying Beatles music and lyrics at the Church of the Covenant. “This is the Place: Women Writing about Home” was held at Trinity Church. Another version of home was discussed in “Voices of America: The Immigrant Experience Through a Writer’s Eyes”, featuring award-winning Grace Talusan. At Emmanuel Church, “Memoir: Strange Journeys”, was moderated by WBUR ARTery reporter Maria Garcia. Virginia Prescott provided the podcast “Welcome to Nightvale". Old South Church was the site for “Natural and Unnatural History: Earthquakes and Woolly Mammoths”. Additionally, Somerville author Daphne Kalotay provided the “One City One Story” feature.
For the first time in its nine-year history, the BBF dedicated a whole venue exclusively to sessions for writers. The Boston Common Hotel and Conference Center was the main site for these sessions. Included was a game of “Literary Never Have I Ever” hosted by Stephanie Gayle. “Reading Like a Writer: Debuts, Perspective, and Setting”, was a trilogy of sessions connecting professionals of the craft. “Reading Like a Writer: Poetry”, featuring Stephanie Burt, Myron Hardy, and Erika L. Sanchez provided attendees with sample exploration. “BBF Unbound: Writing from Privilege”, featured authors Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Shuchi Saraswat, Laura van den Berg, Hasanthika Sirisena, and Kaitlin Solimine. Mass Poetry sponsored “Poems and Pints” at XHALE. Rebecca Morgan Frank, Krysten Hill, and Natalie Shapero were the featured poets.
2018
The 2018 festival was held on October 13. It was the tenth annual event and took place in venues throughout Copley Square, including Emmanuel Church, French Cultural Center, Church of the Covenant, Trinity Church, Old South Church, Boston Public Library, Prudential Center, Boston Architectural College, and Room & Board. For the first time, East Boston and Roxbury were included as satellites. Also for the first time, a "Hide-a-Book" event was held on Tuesday the 9th, during which Boston Book Festival volunteers hid books in and around Boston and tweeted pictures of them for people to find. The "One City One Story" program was suspended due to litigation and claims of plagiarism.[citation needed]
A kickoff keynote was at the Old South Church was by Michael Pollan with Meghna Chakrabarti. The festival drew a record crowd. More than 275 authors were featured, and 30,000 people attended. The overall focus of the event was on societal issues such as environment, gun violence, #MeToo, social media, cultural divides, and diplomacy. Animal activist Sy Montgomery was featured in the "Animal Story" panel. "Twitter Ate My Brain" included Michael Rich, Tree Sreenivasan, and Maryanne Wolf. Multi-cultural authors Sam Graham-Felsen, Yang Huang, Blair Hurley, and Fatima Farheen Mirza shared and discussed their work in "Between Cultures". Graham Allison joined James Sebenius and Wendy Sherman in discussion of "Diplomacy: the Art of the Deal". Sessions specifically for writers were also offered, as were special programs for young adults and children.
One City One Story
One City One Story (also known as "1C1S") is Boston's annual citywide reading program started by the Boston Book Festival in 2010. The organization prints and distributes, free of charge, 30,000 copies of a short story.[11] The program is intended to lower barriers around reading literary fiction for enjoyment. It functions as a way for the Greater Boston area to come together around a shared reading experience. The program, which usually kicks off in late summer, also starts to build momentum for the Boston Book Festival itself.
The short story chosen the first year was Tom Perrotta's "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face". In 2011 the story was "The Whore's Child" by Richard Russo.[12] The 2012 1C1S selection was "The Lobster Mafia Story" by Anna Solomon. In 2013, it was "Karma" by Rishi Reddi.[13] The 2014 selection was “Sublimation” by Jennifer Haigh.[14] Each year, multiple translations are made available on the Boston Book Festival website and printed copies (in English and, since 2012, in Spanish) are distributed to Boston's libraries, subway stations, coffeehouses, bookstores, farmers' markets, and elsewhere. The program culminates each year with a session at the October Boston Book Festival, at which the story's author participates in a town hall-style discussion with attendees who have read the work.
One City One Story was suspended in 2018 due to litigation and claims of plagiarism.[citation needed]
Authors
2018
A kickoff keynote was at the Old South Church was by Michael Pollan. The Kids' Keynote speaker was Kate DiCamillo. The public affairs keynote speaker was Anand Giridharadas.
Other featured presenters included Graham Allison, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Justine Bateman, Stephanie Burt, Eve Ewing, Yang Huang, Laura Koenig, Beth Macy, Monica Munoz Martinez, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Sy Montgomery, Susan Oleksiw, James Sebenius, Wendy Sherman, Sree Sreenivasan, and Mo Walsh.
Featured presenters included: Graham Allison, M.T. Anderson, Stephanie Burt, Meghna Chakrabarti, Sonya Chung, Vicki Croke, Sari Edelstein, Hallie Ephron, Erica Ferencik, Meredith Goldstein, Krysten Hill, Ha Jin, Margot Kahn, Laura Koenig, Dennis Lehane, Marianne Leone, Kekla Magoon, Claire Messud, Celeste Ng, Erika L. Sanchez, Joanna Schaffhausen, Lemony Snicket, Mo Walsh, and Paul Yoon.
