Exiled Kenyan novelist, playwright and critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o kicks off the Madison part of the annual Wisconsin Book Festival Wednesday with an afternoon reading from his novel "Wizard of the Crow." The largest book festival in the state ends five days later with a four-hour party at a saloon featuring songs, improv comedy, puppetry and such - all book-related. (Wa Thiong'o also reads at 2:30 p.m. today at the UWM Union's Fireside Lounge, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.)
This is the fifth year of the festival, and every year, the book bash gains stature - more events, more funding, more "name" authors, and more people. So, though it feels as if I'm writing the same old story over and over again, I find myself dutifully taking notes, quoting an organizer or two, hunting for a theme or for something fresh to highlight.
This year, that something fresh could be the glint of black writers and themes threading the festival. But first, the dutiful details . . . .
Last year, around 10,000 people attended the festival; this year festival director Allison Jones Chaim expects 15,000.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we get more," she explained, "because this year I think we have authors with more recognizable names: Jonathan Harr, Ted Kooser (the former poet laureate) and Michael Chabon."
About 150 events are scheduled, roughly 50 of them outside Madison in such cities as Milwaukee and Edgerton. (The Milwaukee events began last week.) And once more, Chaim and the Wisconsin Humanities Council, which oversees the festival, were able to get funding for the festival's $150,000 tab from donations (both in kind and in cash) and grants, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts.
On Madison's opening night, the headliner event features Robert Sapolsky, billed as the world's funniest neurologist. Sapolsky, whose books ("Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," "A Primate's Memoir") have been hailed by critics and readers alike, will talk about the reasons we become less interested in novelty as we get older and how chemical changes make us feel more comfortable with the familiar as we age.
Chaim is also excited about poet Marilyn Nelson, for example, who makes two appearances, one on Saturday morning to discuss her celebrated book, "A Wreath for Emmett Till," and another that afternoon on a panel, "Why We Hate: A Panel Discussion."
Nelson, a prize-winning poet, tells the story of Emmett Till through a sequence of 15 interlinked sonnets. Till was the 14-year-old African American boy lynched in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The lynching was among events that sparked the civil rights movement.
On Friday, another lionized poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson (originally from the Caribbean, now living in England), will discuss his first U.S. book, "Mi Revalueshanary Fren." The collection deals with racism, politics and music, among other topics. Johnson, the author of six collections of poetry and numerous record albums, is the first black poet and only the second living poet to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.
Friday also focuses a spotlight on Milwaukee's pre-1960, thriving black community when Ivory Abena Black and others discuss the self-published, "Bronzeville: A Milwaukee Lifestyle."
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