Be Immersed in Literature and Surrounded by Book Lovers at the West Virginia Book Festival Next Month

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Next month, the West Virginia Book Festival returns to the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center.

Throughout the West Virginia Book Festival on October 21, there will be writing workshops, author talks and book signing events, a Festival Marketplace in the Grand South Hall, Word Play for Children, and the Children’s Storybook Costume Parade. There will also be a used book sale happening at the Grant North Hall, organized by the Kanawha County Public Library from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with reduced prices from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Come out for this free event to meet best-selling fantasy author, R .F. Kuang, and mystery novelist, William Kent Krueger, among others.

R. F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning, #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History, as well as the forthcoming Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards.

A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Chinese literature, and Asian American literature.

Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. It asks the question, can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

In reference to Kuang’s debut novel, The Poppy War, The Washington Post said, “A study in every kind of violence…Kuang pulls from East Asian history, including the brutality of the Second Sino-Japanese war, to weave a wholly unique experience.”

Publisher’s Weekly called it “a strong and dramatic launch to Kuang’s career.”

Find out more on R. F. Kuang’s website.

William Kent Krueger

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe.

His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers.

Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. The companion novel, This Tender Land, was published in September 2019, and spent nearly six months in the top ten of the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent novel, Fox Creek, was released in August of 2022.

Find out more at Krueger’s website.

Check out the full schedule of events for the West Virginia Book Festival at www.wvbookfestival.org.

Disclaimer: The personal views of any author attending the West Virginia Book Festival are neither condoned nor supported by festival organizers or by the Kanawha County Public Library. Authors are selected based on their published work and not their personal opinions.