The 32nd annual Concord Festival of Authors (CFA), managed by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library, celebrates the written and spoken word this fall with literary events throughout town on October 17 – October 30.
The 2024 CFA kicks off with Keynote Speaker Rajani LaRocca, the Newbery Honor-winning author of Red, White and Whole, on October 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the Concord Free Public Library (CFPL). The Friends of CFPL will present this year’s Ruth Ratner Miller Award (ticketed event) for Excellence in American History to award-winning author Jacqueline Jones on Saturday, October 19 at 7:00 p.m. at CFPL. Jones is the author of No Right to an Honest Living, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for History. The Concord Free Public Library will also feature the Leslie Riedel Memorial Lecture for Young People, presented to Big Nate author Lincoln Peirce, as well as local author Richard Higgins, the popular Mystery Night Panel, and author Natalie Dykstra.
The Thoreau Society will present the 2024 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing to J. Drew Lanham on Friday, October 25 at 7:00 p.m. at the Trinitarian Congregational Church. Other organizations offering programs for CFA 2024 include Barefoot Books, Barrow Bookstore, the Concord Museum, the Transcendentalism Council of First Parish, and the Walden Woods Project.
The popular Breakfast with the Authors, moderated by local author and physician Dr. Suzanne Koven, will take place on Saturday, October 26 at 8:30 a.m. at the Colonial Inn. This year’s event features esteemed authors Steve Almond (Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow), Crystal King (In the Garden of Monsters) and Margot Livesey (The Road from Belhaven). Ticket information will be available on the CFA website in early September.
This year’s CFA will include the second Joel Myerson Annual Lecture. After Professor Joel Myerson died in 2021, the William Munroe Special Collections at CFPL, along with representatives from the Louisa May Alcott Society, Margaret Fuller Society, The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and The Thoreau Society launched the Joel Myerson Annual Lecture Series. This final event of the CFA will take place on October 30 at 6:00 p.m. at the Concord Free Public Library. Scholars Brigitte Bailey, Leslie Eckel, and Megan Marshall will discuss their work editing Margaret Fuller’s writings. Join us to learn more about their new editions’ goals, challenges, and epiphanies as we celebrate Fuller’s vision of women’s potential in our twenty-first century world.
Most events are free with registration, unless noted on the website. For more information on this year’s CFA, please visit ConcordFestivalofAuthors.org.