Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston host blockbuster book fairs, while smaller hubs and college towns like Columbia, South Carolina, and Charlottesville, Virginia, spur pilgrimages from around the country to their renowned literary festivals. Lovers of the written word will have a new destination when the Palm Beach Book Festival premieres April 11.
Inveterate reader Steve Richards, an operations manager for Palm Beach Broadcasting, had long dreamed of a publishing event closer to home. After interviewing novelist Lois Cahall for his Sunday morning radio segment, Speaking of Writers, they recognized that she had the connections and moxie to realize that vision. Originally from Manhattan, Cahall retreated to West Palm Beach in 2012 to concentrate on her third book, the forthcoming memoir The Muse: My Life Before It Was Mine. “Artists survive their experiences by striking out at the truth,” says Cahall.
The Palm Beach Book Festival will offer insights by industry experts and authors at a series of panels hosted at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. For discussions about the cultural evolution of women’s literature and the spellbinding allure of suspense, mystery and crime genres, bestselling novelists Jacquelyn Mitchard and Linda Fairstein join provocative journalists Joe Klein and James Wolcott among other featured guests. The event will conclude with speakers coming together over cocktails at the Colony Hotel or a closing party headlined by James Patterson, a Palm Beach resident who dominates the thriller market and has become as prolific in philanthropy as he is in print. palmbeachbookfestival.com —Margery Gordon
