The Write Moves

Mason’s annual book festival puts together its best line-up yet

Best-selling authors Mitch Albom and Jonathan Lethem will win the top awards at the ninth annual Fall for the Book Festival, September 23–28. Albom accepts the Fairfax Prize on Tuesday, September 25, and Lethem receives the Mason Award on Friday, September 28. These authors are only the tip of this year’s marquee, which brings some of the finest names in American letters to Mason’s Fairfax Campus, including Elizabeth Berg, Joseph Ellis, Jennifer Egan, Nathan Englander, and Alice McDermott, the latter in conversation with Mason’s own Susan Richards Shreve.

Several alumni will take part in this year’s festival. Betsy Andrews, MFA Creative Writing ’97, and Scott Berg, MFA Creative Writing ’97, will speak on a panel about life after grad school. Andrews is the author of the poetry collections She-Devil, In Trouble, and New Jersey, which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. Berg, an assistant professor of English at Mason, wrote Grand Avenues: The Story of the Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. This study of Pierre L’Enfant has drawn critical acclaim from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, Margaret Bishop, MFA Creative Writing ’06, will discuss Single Scene Short Stories, an anthology she edited. Danielle Deulen, MFA Creative Writing ’06, and Ryan Effgen, MFA Creative Writing ’06, will read from their recent work. Deulen was recently named the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Effgen’s short story “The Inappropriate Behavior of Our Alleged Loved Ones” was included in the anthology Best New American Voices 2007 and is being adapted for a short film. He won third prize in the 2005 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest and earned a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts in 2006.

For more information and a complete schedule of events, bookmark www.fallforthebook.org.