By Christine M. Quirk — Christine@concordbridge.org
Rajani LaRocca, the Newbery Honor-winning author of “Red, White and Whole,” will be the keynote speaker for the Concord Festival of Authors, which kicks off at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, October 17, at the Concord Free Public Library.
The 32nd annual event, which celebrates the written and spoken word, will run through October 30 and feature literary events townwide.
This year’s Ruth Ratner Miller Award for Excellence in American History will be presented to Jacqueline Jones at 7 p.m., Saturday, October 19, at CFPL. Jones is the author of “No Right to an Honest Living,” winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for History.
The Library will also feature the Leslie Riedel Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature to “Big Nate” author Lincoln Peirce.
The Thoreau Society will present the 2024 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing to J. Drew Lanham at 7 p.m., Friday, October 25, at the Trinitarian Congregational Church.
Breakfast with the Authors, moderated by local author and physician Dr. Suzanne Koven, will be held at 8:30 a.m., Saturday, October 26, at the Colonial Inn. The event will include Steve Almond (“Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow”), Crystal King (“In the Garden of Monsters,”) and Margot Livesey (“The Road from Belhaven.”)
Other events will include the Joel Myerson Annual Lecture and the Mystery Night Panel. Local organizations offering programs include Barefoot Books, The Barrow Bookstore, the Concord Museum, The Transcendentalism Council of First Parish, and The Walden Woods Project.
Events are free with registration, unless otherwise noted. For more information, visit concordfestivalofauthors.org.
