Durango, a town of readers, will be enjoying a wealth of visits by nationally known authors over the next week.
The Common Reading Experience at Fort Lewis College will welcome Temple Grandin on Wednesday, but this weekend, the Durango Public Library will present Tom Perrotta as the headliner for its sixth annual Literary Festival. Perrotta wrote Election and Little Children, both of which were made into Academy Award-nominated films. He also wrote The Leftovers, which was adapted into a series for HBO.
The festival will begin Thursday with a free screening of “Election,” which stars Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. The main event will be Friday night, when Perrotta will speak, meet with readers and sign books.
A significant portion of the funding for the festival comes from the Friends of the Library, which raises money through its bookstore at the library, book sales and a luncheon.
The luncheon will be held Saturday. Called a Local Authors Extravaganza, it will feature local authors Michael Carson, Julia Hastings-Black, Mandy Mikulencak, Tekla Miller, Stew Mosberg, Holli Pfau, Greg Picard and Melissa Stacy.
Over the past four years, the Friends have contributed more than $120,000 to the library, including youth programming, business programming and databases, an audiobooks database, early literacy stations for the children’s library and mailing bags and postage for delivering books to home-bound readers. One of the most recent acquisitions for the library is a new research database using Britannica Online and Britannica ImageQuest.
In previous years, the festival has welcomed Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors; award-winning mystery/thriller writer C.J. Box; Craig Childs, author of Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession; Ellen Hopkins, New York Times best-selling author of Crank, Identical and Triangles; and Emily Griffin, author of Something Borrowed, Heart of the Matter and Something Blue.
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Durango Public Library Literary Festival offers two more days of activities at the library, 1900 East Third Ave.
5:30 p.m. Friday: Opening Reception.
7 p.m. Friday: presentation and book signing with author Tom Perrotta.
11:30 a.m. Saturday: Local Authors Extravaganza. Tickets are $30 and are available at the Information Desk at the library.
Visit www.durangopubliclibrary.org/screens/ref14.html to access the new research databases Britannica Online Library Edition and Britannica ImageQuest.
