With international programming and world-premiere theater, Charleston Literary Festival champions innovation and creativity in 2024 program
CHARLESTON, SC, October 11, 2024 (EZ Newswire) -- With just under a month until show time, Charleston Literary Festival is happy to report that the Festival has already sold out of three events, sold out the V.I.P. weekend packages, and seen an increase of 40% on total ticket sales from last year. The Festival is also delighted to announce that it is planning to further its community impact this year by welcoming student groups from 11 different schools and universities in South Carolina and North Carolina.Event: Master Slave Husband Wife, Ilyon Woo in conversation with Dr. Kim Cliett Long, Founder of the Mayor’s Book Club and Charleston Literary Festival board member
Date and time: Sunday, November 10 at 4 p.m.
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is free, but registration required
Two authors longlisted for the UK’s most prestigious award for fiction, the 2024 Booker Prize, will appear at the Festival in November. Rachel Kushner will discuss her wickedly funny novel dealing with espionage and eco-warriors, Creation Lake with Post and Courier editor-at-large, Autumn Phillips. Claire Messud will discuss her novel This Strange Eventful History, about exile and homecoming, with broadcaster, Georgina Godwin.
Event: Nikki Giovanni in conversation with Dr. Tonya Matthews
Date and time: Monday, November 4 at noon
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is $30
Charleston Literary Festival maintains its international edge by featuring six authors from the UK, two authors from Ireland, and the current Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Kwame Dawes.
Event: Kwame Dawes & Kimiko Hahn: Fortunate Travelers
Date and time: Monday, November 4 at 2 p.m.
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is $30
Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes was born in Ghana, spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica, and then from 1992 to 2012, he was professor of English and distinguished poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. In 2009 Dawes was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. He is currently University of Nebraska as the Glenna Luschel Professor of English and the editor of Prairie Schooner.
New Yorker Kimiko Hahn, born the child of artists—a Japanese American mother from Hawai‘i and a German American father from Wisconsin, earned a master’s degree in Japanese literature from Columbia University. Hahn is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024); Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); and The Unbearable Heart (Kaya Production, 1995), which received an American Book Award.
Dawes and Hahn with be in conversation with former South Carolina Poet Laureate, Marjory Wentworth.
Event: Ross Benjamin & Mark Harman: A Kafka Centenary Celebration
Date and time: Thursday, November 7 at 4 p.m.
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is $30
In celebration of the centenary of German-language writer Franz Kafka’s death, two of the most important English-language translators of Kafka’s work: Ross Benjamin, author of an essential new translation of Kafka’s diaries, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, and Mark Harman, author of a highly praised new collection of Kafka’s short stories, Selected Stories, will discuss Kafka’s worlds and the lasting impact of his work. This event is recognized as part of Project Kafka 2024—a global Kafka festival to celebrate the writer’s centenary coordinated by the Adalbert Stifter Association and the Prague City Library.
- Nikki Giovanni, internationally-renowned poet and activist, will appear to speak about her life in poetry, in partnership with the International African American Museum
- Jayne Anne Phillips, on Night Watch, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- Claire Messud on This Strange Eventful History, nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize
- Rachel Kushner, on Creation Lake, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2024
- Irish writer Colm Tóibín on Long Island, a 2024 Oprah’s Book Club pick
- English writer Chris Whitaker on All the Colors of the Dark, a 2024 Jenna’s Book Club pick
- Irish writer Paul Murray on The Bee Sting, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2023
- Attica Locke, Guide Me Home, New York Times bestselling author
When it comes to nonfiction: the Festival will feature the following themes:
- "Sport and endings" with English writer, Geoff Dyer, in The Last Days of Roger Federer
- "The Dreyfus Affair" with Maurice Samuels and Adam Gopnik
- "Hollywood scandal" with Griffin Dunne discussing his memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club
- "Politics and corporate influence" with Brody Mullins and Luke Mullins in The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government
- "Theater and democracy" with James Shapiro in The Playbook
- "Art and why it matters" with Bianca Bosker in Get the Picture
- "Women’s health and happiness" with Sharon Malone in Grown Woman Talk
- "Race and the U.S." with Michele Norris in Our Hidden Conversations
- "Home and exile" with André Aciman in Roman Year
- "Classics" with Emily Wilson and Judith Thurman as they discuss Wilson’s translation of The Iliad
- "Education and the legacy of slavery" with David Blight in Yale and Slavery: A History
- "Shakespeare’s female contemporaries" with Ramie Targoff in Shakespeare’s Sisters
- "Politics and philosophy" with Michael J. Sandel in Democracy’s Discontent
- "Memory and how we remember" with neuroscientist Dr. Charan Ranganath
- "Patriarchy and how men came to rule" with Angela Saini
- And more!
“Partnering with the festival is a great opportunity for the College’s faculty, staff, students and alumni to engage with the literary community,” says Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Suzanne Austin.
“The Library is a community connector, so we appreciate the opportunity to provide access to the titles featured in this year’s Charleston Literary Festival,” said CCPL Executive Director Angela Craig.
CCPL will also livestream three events at Charleston Literary Festival into CCPL branches this year in an effort to increase access to the programming.
Event: Michele Norris with Kerri Forrest: Our Hidden Conversations
Date and time: Saturday, November 2 at 2–3 p.m.
Location: Dorchester Road Library (6325 Dorchester Rd, North Charleston, SC 29418)
Tickets: Admission is free
Event: A Conversation with Nikki Giovanni: Nikki Giovanni with Tonya Matthews
Date and time: Monday, November 4 at 12–1 p.m.
Location: Bees Ferry West Ashley Library (2020 Proximity Dr, Charleston, SC 29414)
Tickets: Admission is free
Event: Colm Tóibín with Bilal Qureshi
Date and time: Saturday, November 9 at 12–1 p.m.
Location: Charleston County Library (68 Calhoun St, Charleston, SC 29401)
Tickets: Admission is free
To learn more about the Young Writers Awards, visit https://www.charlestonliteraryfestival.com/young-writers-awards.
Event: DEBATE: Baldwin v. Buckley
Date and time: Monday, November 4 at 6 p.m.
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is $35
In a true opportunity to Embrace the Conversation and witness the art of how to disagree at its best, on November 4, the 2024 Festival features Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley. Staged by Brooklyn-based theater company, the american vicarious, the play is a theatrical interpretation of the historic 1965 Cambridge Union debate between James Baldwin, leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., U.S.’s most influential conservative intellectual of the time.
Event: All The Beauty In The World
Date and time: Friday, November 8 and Sunday, November 10 at 6:30 p.m.
Location: Dock Street Theatre
Tickets: Admission is $45
A serendipitous meeting at last year's festival brought together author, Patrick Bringley, and British theater director, Dominic Dromgoole, who have partnered to create All The Beauty In The World, a stage play starring Bringley and directed by Dromgoole, the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London. This monologue play has been adapted from Bringley’s book All The Beauty In The World and is produced by Charleston Literary Festival with the help of Spoleto Festival USA.
Destination Literary Event: Charleston Literary Festival
Explore Charleston is helping to spread the word that Charleston is a robust literary and cultural center and Charleston Literary Festival is a must-see, signature cultural event. For the first time ever, the Festival is offering special weekend passes with exclusive offers to our increasing number of out-of-town visitors.
—Helen Hill, CEO of Explore Charleston
Weekend Packages
Event: Black and White Masquerade
Date and time: Friday, November 1 at 8 p.m.
Location: Festival Hall
Tickets: For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.charlestonliteraryfestival.com/masked-literary-feast
We are kicking off Charleston Literary Festival like never before with a Black and White Masquerade inspired by the legendary Black and White Ball that writer Truman Capote threw at the Plaza Hotel in New York in November 1966.
Experience a mysterious world of marvelous masks and luminous literati at Festival Hall on November 1 at 8 p.m. Join us to welcome our authors to Charleston and celebrate our guest of honor, artistic director and literary legend, Diana Reich.
Tickets for all sessions and events are now available for purchase at CharlestonLiteraryFestival.com:
- Individual session tickets start at $30
- All Session Access Passes for the entire festival: $675
- Tickets to the Black and White Masquerade start at $350 and are available here
For more information about the festival schedule, author biographies, and event details, please visit CharlestonLiteraryFestival.com or follow us on Instagram at @charlestonlitfest.
To make sure you stay up to date, sign up for our newsletter at https://www.charlestonliteraryfestival.com/newsletter
We encourage you to buy your books locally. You can buy your books at Charleston Literary Festival official bookseller: Buxton Books, located at 160 King Street. You can also check titles out at the Charleston County Public Library, or download or listen to Festival books from the library on the Libby app.
Charleston Literary Festival is a boutique literary festival with an international edge that takes place every November in Charleston, South Carolina. The Festival presents ten days of top-tier literary programming with an international edge—featuring world-class authors and thinkers in lively conversation. A champion of the free exchange of ideas, Charleston Literary Festival's work fosters the next generation of readers and writers in the Southeast with student programs, awards, and an emerging writers fellowship. Previous speakers at Charleston Literary Festival include: Margaret Atwood, Geraldine Brooks, Tina Brown, Hernan Diaz, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Yaa Gyasi, Patrick Radden Keefe, Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Imani Perry, George Saunders, Claire Keegan, Simon Schama, Richard Ford, Safiya Sinclair, Lorrie Moore, Jeannette Winterson, and many more. For further information, visit CharlestonLiteraryFestival.com.
Media Contact
Andrea Jasmin
+12032521350
andrea@charlestonliteraryfestival.com
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