NEWBURYPORT — Sometimes it's hard to pick out a highlight of the Newburyport Literary Festival — and this year it's particularly tough because there are more writers and events than ever.
The fourth annual festival will be held April 24 and 25 with 70 authors participating in some 50 to 60 events, Co-Chairman Vicki Hendrickson said.
The theme of this year's festival is "Reading for a Lifetime," and there will be events focusing on reading at various life stages and experiences.
"There are different audiences and different highlights" within the festival, said Co-Chairman Jennifer Entwistle.
A dozen authors who focus on literature for children and young adults will talk about getting kids to start reading early and keeping their young audiences interested.
One of this year's two festival honorees is David McPhail, a Newburyport native and award-winning author of nearly 200 children's books.
The other honoree is someone whose entire career was built around putting books into the hands of Newburyporters young and old: retired head librarian Dorothy LaFrance.
LaFrance directed Newburyport's public library for 30 years, long enough to see multiple generations of local readers come through the door.
Friday night's opening event at the Firehouse Center for the Arts will be a conversation between best-selling author Julia Alvarez and Jon Peede, director of literature grants programs for the National Endowment for the Arts. In honor of LaFrance, they'll be talking about the importance of libraries in their own lives and the life of the larger community.
Their dialogue will be followed by the festival's big social event: Dinner with the Authors at 7:30 at Nicholson Hall on Harris Street. Tickets are $50 per person.
Saturday will begin with the always popular Coffee with the Poets at 8:30 a.m. at Central Congregational Church.
New to the festival this year is Operation Homecoming, a writing program begun by the NEA in 2004 to preserve the stories of U.S. military personnel and their families. Authors Marilyn Nelson and Richard Bausch, who were instructors in the program's original writing workshops, will read from their works and then conduct a freewheeling audience discussion.
The NEA's Peede, who as director of the program has run a number of Operation Homecoming sessions, told festival organizers that the discussion often continues informally even after the event is officially over.
Entwistle said a popular workshop called Fiction to Film is being brought back after a year's absence. Eleanor Lipman and Anita Shreve, who have both had movies based on their novels, will host the event.
There are two panels on writing memoirs, Entwistle said. Elizabeth McCracken, Kate Braestrup and Joan Wickersham will talk about "coming back to the joy of life after a deep personal loss," Entwistle said.
Wickersham will also pair up with Julia Glass in a panel moderated by their mutual friend Margot Livesey to talk about the different ways they've brought their life experiences to the printed page: Wickersham through a memoir and Glass with a fictionalized version.
"They'll talk about the different ways they come at writing about their personal experiences," Entwistle said.
The Literary Festival hopes to attract 3,000 eager readers to downtown Newburyport for the weekend. All the events, except Dinner with the Authors, are free.
Hendrickson said major funding is provided by the Institution for Savings and the Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank, and by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the cultural councils of Amesbury, Newburyport, Newbury, West Newbury and Merrimac.
Although the Newburyport Literary Festival has become a roaring success over the past four years, Hendrickson worries that the economic downturn may take its toll in the future.
She said there will donation canisters at many of the venues, to get a head start on the 2010 festival.
"Planning for next year is going to be difficult," Hendrickson said.
For a complete list of authors appearing at the festival, visit the Web site newburyportliteraryfestival.org. There is also a silent auction on the Web site.
