Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

Like so many other events, the San Antonio Book Festival is going online this year but it promises to showcase a terrific author lineup, which includes local and national literary luminaries.

“We are having more writers in this festival than ever before,” said the fest’s literary director Clay Smith who has been associated with the event for years. “Last year we had 125, this year we have almost 200. So, there is more to choose from, a greater diversity of subject matter.”

Among the highlights, Smith listed the participation of Walter Isaacson, the author of “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, the Future of the Human Race” which tells the story of one of the scientists who developed the CRISPR technology for gene editing and shared the Nobel Prize with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier. The book is significant because it may help readers understand the game-changing nature and far-reaching impact of the two scientists’ work. Isaacson, who appears on the TV program Amanpour & Co, also wrote the biographies of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and the great artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Another big highlight is the appearance of novelist Isabel Allende who is now promoting her non-fiction book “The Soul of the Woman,” based on her own life. And bestselling author Kristin Hannah will talk about her novel “The Four Winds,” a story set in Texas during the Great Depression. It’s the number one bestseller right now, noted Smith.

But there’s a lot more though we can only mention a few additional names: Nic Stone who writes young adult novels; novelist Stephen Graham Jones, the author of “The Only Good Indians”; Luis Alberto Urrea, a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame; science fiction writer, Jeff VanderMeer; Charles Yu, winner of the National Book Award for “Interior Chinatown, and poet Martin Espada.

 Participating San Antonio authors include poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who is known throughout the U.S. and beyond; Octavio Quintanilla, the immediate past San Antonio poet laureate; Jim LaVilla-Havelin, the Express-News poetry editor and the National Poetry Month organizer in San Antonio; Ellen Riojas Clark; Cary Clack; Sandra Cisneros; John Olivares Espinoza; Steve Kellman and others, including our former city manager Sherryl Scully. Yes, you read it correctly. She is the author of “Greedy Bastards: One City’s Texas-size Struggle to Avoid a Financial Crisis.”

These authors will appear via Zoom-like sessions in conversation with moderators, journalists and fellow writers. Most sessions – though not all – are free but you have to register. The four ticketed sessions are Kristin Hannah’s discussion with Meg Wolitzer; the Jeff VanderMeer conversation with Silvia Moreno-Garcia; the discussion of “The Code Breaker,” and the chat with Isabel Allende.

A new program this year is Lit Crawl, said Smith, which was supposed to premiere last year but didn’t since the entire festival was cancelled, a victim of COVID-19. The idea behind Lit Crawl is to allow book lovers to mingle with each other and share the experience as they sample readings and other literary events in stores, restaurants and even parking lots. Reading tends to be solitary unlike the enjoyment of music which is often shared with groups of fans in various venues. The sharing will just be online this time around, but Smith noted that all efforts had been made to make interaction and participation as easy as possible, not just with the presenters but with other festival-goers, too.

Since the book fest is a nonprofit, it will also hold a fundraising event, dubbed Book Appetit Literary Feast, another virtual affair. The star of that luncheon will be novelist Armor Towles, who wrote the very successful books “Rules of Civility” and a “A Gentleman in Moscow,” a novel that will resonate with readers during this “shelter-in-place” time. (The protagonist is not allowed to leave a certain Moscow hotel for the rest of his life.)

The books talked about during the festival, can be ordered through the Nowhere Bookshop, a locally owned bookstore on Broadway, which has just announced its reopening; www.nowherebookshop.com
To see the entire festival calendar and more information go to www.sabookfestival.org/online-edition
The festival opens April 9 and runs through April 11.