2016 Brooklyn Book Festival to feature Salman Rushdie, Joyce Carol Oates

Brooklyn BookBeat

June 17, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Renowned author Joyce Carol Oates, along with hundreds of other writers, will participate in this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival. Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP

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At a lively soiree at Issue Project Room in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn on Thursday, the Brooklyn Book Festival (BKBF) and Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council announced the first 180 national and international authors slated for this fall’s 2016 BKBF.

Participating writers include Margaret Atwood, Sherman Alexie, Ken Bruen, Margo Jefferson, Salman Rushdie and Joyce Carol Oates.

This fall’s weeklong run-up to the Sept. 18 event begins the Monday before the festival, with five weeknights of literature-themed “Bookend” programs presented all over New York City. These “Bookends” lead up to a spectacular weekend.

BKBF Children’s Day is Saturday, Sept. 17, and will feature authors including Peter Brown, Nick Bruel, Soman Chainani, Mike Curato, Gordon Korman, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Christian Robinson, Rebecca Stead and Rita Williams-Garcia. Theatrical performances, a dueling draw-off, workshops, picture book and young readers’ stages and a Literary Marketplace just for kids are all part of the day’s celebration of childhood reading.

The flagship 14-stage BKBF will take place Sunday, Sept. 18. On festival day, 300 writers of beloved works of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and graphic novels will participate in panels, readings and other creative performances of their work.

This year the festival welcomes back AT&T as its major sponsor.

The crowd at Thursday’s soiree was treated to an additional surprise in the form of a video announcement featuring celebrated book jacket artist, graphic designer and author Chip Kidd. Kidd has been tasked with designing a dynamic, representative image for the festival’s 11th year, to be premiered in July.

“Among creative cities, Brooklyn is unique in its combination of highly concentrated talent and unparalleled diversity,” said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books and chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council. “BKBF, which showcases both the local and global giants of the literary world, perfectly encapsulates Brooklyn’s cosmopolitan vibrancy.”

“As a bibliophile, I am excited to once again participate in the Brooklyn Book Festival, the preeminent celebration of literature and literary culture in our nation,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. “In historic venues across Brooklyn, festival-goers will congregate to celebrate the written word and our borough’s role in facilitating the dynamic literary culture which the festival celebrates.”

Authors this year represent nations and cultures from all over the world — South Africa (Imraan Coovadia and Masande Ntshanga) to Australia (Helen Garner), Cameroon (Imbolo Mbue and Patrice Nganang), Chile (Lina Meruane), Czech Republic (Magdaléna Platzová), Denmark (Dorthe Nors), Egypt (Yasmine El Rashidi), France (Maylis De Kerangal and Cyril Pedrosa), India (Jerry Pinto), Israel (Sayed Kashua), Mauritius (Ananda Devi), Mexico (Álvaro Enrigue), Nigeria (Okey Ndibe) and Sri Lanka (Anuk Arudpragasam) — with more international authors on the way.